Dynamics of an ion chain in a harmonic potential
Dynamics of an ion chain in a harmonic potential
Cold ions in anisotropic harmonic potentials can form ion chains of various sizes. Here, the density of ions is not uniform, and thus the eigenmodes are not phononic-like waves. We study chains of $N⪢1$ ions and evaluate analytically the long-wavelength modes and the density of states in the short-wavelength limit. …