Design and characterization of a cryogenic vacuum chamber for ion trapping experiments

Abstract

We present the design and characterization of a cryogenic vacuum chamber incorporating mechanical isolation from vibrations, a high numerical-aperture in-vacuum imaging objective, in-vacuum magnetic shielding, and an antenna for global radio frequency manipulation of trapped ions. The cold shield near 4 K is mechanically referenced to an underlying optical table via thermally insulating supports and exhibits root mean square vibrations less than 7.61(4) nm. Using the in-vacuum objective, we can detect 397 nm photons from a trapped 40Ca+ ion with 1.77% efficiency and achieve 99.9963(4)% single-shot state-detection fidelity in 50 μs. To characterize the efficacy of the magnetic shields, we perform Ramsey experiments on the ground-state qubit and obtain a coherence time of 24(2) ms, which extends to 0.25(1) s with a single spin-echo pulse. XY4 and XY32 dynamical decoupling sequences driven via the radio frequency antenna extend the coherence to 0.72(2) and 0.81(3) s, respectively.