Experimental study of anomalous heating and trap instabilities in a microscopic ¹³⁷Ba ion trap

The anomalous heating and trap instabilities in a microscopic 137Ba ion were studied. Initial measurements of the Ba ion, laser cooled to the first few vibrational states, showed no anomalous heating of the vibrational phonon for observation of up to 1 ms. The growth of large and unstable bias voltages correlated with exposure to the atomic beam was subsequently observed. The connection between the trap instability abd anomalous heating observed in quantum computation was discussed.