We report the trapping of ultracold neutral Rb atoms and Ba⁺ ions in a common optical potential in absence of any radio frequency (rf) fields. We prepare Ba⁺ at 370 μK and demonstrate efficient sympathetic cooling by 100 μK after one collision. Our approach is currently limited by the Rb density and related three-body losses, but it overcomes the fundamental limitation in rf traps set by rf-driven, micromotion-induced heating. It is applicable to a wide range of ion-atom species, and may enable novel ultracold chemistry experiments and complex many-body dynamics.
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Schmidt et al. (2020) studied this question.
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