Mass-selective removal of ions from Paul traps using parametric excitation

We study a method for mass-selective removal of ions from a Paul trap by parametric excitation. This can be achieved by applying an oscillating electric quadrupole field at twice the secular frequency $$\omega _{\text {sec}}$$ ω sec using pairs of opposing electrodes. While excitation near the resonance with the secular frequency $$\omega _{\text {sec}}$$ ω sec only leads to a linear increase of the amplitude with excitation duration, parametric excitation near $$2\, \omega _{\text {sec}}$$ 2 ω sec results in an exponential increase of the amplitude. This enables efficient removal of ions from the trap with modest excitation voltages and narrow bandwidth, therefore, substantially reducing the disturbance of ions with other charge-to-mass ratios. We numerically study and compare the mass selectivity of the two methods. In addition, we experimentally show that the barium isotopes with 136 and 137 nucleons can be removed from small ion crystals and ejected out of the trap while keeping $$^{138}\text {Ba}^{+}$$ 138 Ba + ions Doppler cooled, corresponding to a mass selectivity of better than $$\Delta m / m = 1/138$$ Δ m / m = 1 / 138 . This method can be widely applied to ion trapping experiments without major modifications since it only requires modulating the potential of the ion trap.