Two-dimensional planar ion crystals in a Penning trap are a platform for quantum information science experiments. However, the low-frequency planar modes of these crystals are not efficiently cooled by laser cooling, which can limit the utility of the drumhead modes for quantum information processing. Recently, it has been shown that nonlinear mode coupling can enhance the cooling of the low-frequency planar modes. Here, we demonstrate in numerical simulations that this coupling can be dynamically tuned by adiabatically changing the rotation frequency of the ion crystal during experiments. Furthermore, we show that this technique can, in addition, produce lower temperatures for the low-frequency planar modes via an adiabatic cooling process. This result allows cooling of the planar modes to sub-millikelvin temperatures, resulting in improved spectral resolution of the drumhead modes at experimentally relevant rotation frequencies, which is crucial for quantum information processing applications.

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• Plasma crystals
• Trapped ions
• First-principles calculations in plasma physics
• Molecular dynamics
• Penning traps