All-optical trapping of strongly coupled ions

We present and analyze a novel method of long-time ion trapping. This purely optical method is based on the action of rectified gradient forces on the ions in a 3D dissipative polychromatic optical superlattice which allows one to form super-deep potential wells for the ions. The ion trap presented ensures the possibility of long-time confinement both of single ions and small ordered ensembles of strongly coupled ions, i.e. ion (Coulomb) clusters. We demonstrate, by the numerical simulations of stochastic ion motion, the trapping of two-ion clusters for times exceeding several seconds.