EIT ground-state cooling of long ion strings

Electromagnetically-induced-transparency (EIT) cooling is a ground-state cooling technique for trapped particles. EIT offers a broader cooling range in frequency space compared to more established methods. In this work, we experimentally investigate EIT cooling in strings of trapped atomic ions. In strings of up to 18 ions, we demonstrate simultaneous ground state cooling of all radial modes in under 1 ms. This is a particularly important capability in view of emerging quantum simulation experiments with large numbers of trapped ions. Our analysis of the EIT cooling dynamics is based on a novel technique enabling single-shot measurements of phonon numbers, by rapid adiabatic passage on a vibrational sideband of a narrow transition.