We report on a measurement of the characteristic temperature of an ultracold rubidium ion source, in which a cloud of laser-cooled atoms is converted to ions by photo-ionization. Extracted ion pulses are focused on a detector with a pulsed-field technique. The resulting experimental spot sizes are compared to particle-tracking simulations, from which a source temperature $T = (1 \pm 2)$ mK and the corresponding transversal reduced emittance $\epsilon_r = 7.9 X 10^{ -9}$ m rad $\sqrt{ \rm{ eV}}$ are determined. We find that this result is likely limited by space charge forces even though the average number of ions per bunch is 0.022.
Categories: physics.atom-ph physics.ins-det