Progress Towards Ion Trap Piezo Coupling*

We report our current experimental progress towards coupling a macroscopic piezoelectric element to an ion. Current progress is being made using a four-rod Paul trap and a 1mm cube piezo made of PZT. By tuning the secular frequency of a trapped Yb $^{171}$ ion near the resonant motional eigenmode of the piezo, we should see an increase in the coupling between the two objects. We hope to see this coupling through observation of a peak in the ion heating rate as a function of ion secular frequency and distance to the piezo.