Large two dimensional Coulomb crystals in a radio frequency surface ion trap

We designed and operated a surface ion trap with an ion-substrate distance of 500 μm, realized with standard printed-circuit-board techniques. The trap has been loaded with up to a few thousand Sr+ ions in the Coulomb-crystal regime. An analytical model of the pseudo-potential allowed us to determine the parameters that drive the trap into anisotropic regimes in which we obtain large (N>150) purely two dimensional (2D) ion Coulomb crystals. These crystals may open a simple and reliable way to experiments on quantum simulations of large 2D systems.