Optical dipole-force cooling of anions in a Penning trap

We discuss the possibility of using optical dipole forces for Sisyphus cooling of ions stored in a Penning trap by addressing the specific case of the molecular cooling candidate C$_2^−$ . Using a GPU accelerated code for Penning trap simulations, which we extended to include the molecule-light interaction, we show that this scheme can decrease the time required for cooling by an order of magnitude with respect to Doppler cooling. In our simulation we found that a reduction of the axial anion temperature from 10 K to 50 mK in around 10s is possible. The temperature of the radial degrees of freedom was seen to thermalize to 150 mK. Based on the laser-cooled C$_2^−$, a study on the sympathetic cooling of anions with masses 1–50 nucleon was performed, covering relevant candidates for investigations of chemical anion reactions at ultracold temperatures as well as for antimatter studies.