We theoretically study the occurrence of quantum jumps in the resonance fluorescence of a trapped atom. Here, the atom is laser cooled in a configuration of level such that the occurrence of a quantum jump is associated to a change of the vibrational center-of-mass motion by one phonon. The statistics of the occurrence of the dark fluorescence period is studied as a function of the physical parameters and the corresponding features in the spectrum of resonance fluorescence are identified. We discuss the information which can be extracted on the atomic motion from the observation of a quantum jump in the considered setup.
We experimentally investigate the resonance fluorescence spectrum of single 171Yb and 172Yb ions which are laser cooled to the Lamb-Dicke regime in a radiofrequency trap. While the fluorescence scattering of 172Yb is continuous, the 171Yb fluorescence is interrupted by quantum jumps because a nonvanishing rate of spontaneous transitions leads to electron shelving in the metastable hyperfine sublevel 2D3/2(F=2). The average duration of the resulting dark periods can be varied by changing the intensity of a repumping laser field. Optical heterodyne detection is employed to analyze the fluorescen…
The resonant heating of a harmonically trapped ion by a standing-wave light field is described as a quantum stochastic process combining a coherent Schroedinger evolution with Bohr-Einstein quantum jumps. Quantum and semi-quantum treatments are compared.
We propose a scheme to generate a superposition with arbitrary coefficients on a line in phase space for the center-of-mass vibrational mode of N ions by means of isolating all other spectator vibrational modes from the center-of-mass mode. It can be viewed as the generation of previous methods for preparing motional states of one ion. For large number of ions, we need only one cyclic operatin to generate such a superposition of many coherent states.
The light scattered by a cold trapped ion, which is in the stationary state of laser cooling, presents features due to the mechanical effects of atom-photon interaction. These features appear as additional peaks (sidebands) in the spectrum of resonance fluorescence. Among these sidebands the literature has discussed the Stokes and anti-Stokes components, namely the sidebands of the elastic peak. In this manuscript we show that the motion also gives rise to sidebands of the inelastic peaks. These are not always visible, but, as we show, can be measured in parameter regimes which are experimenta…
The influence of the center of mass motion of a trapped two level system on efficient resonant single photon absorption is investigated. It is shown that this absorption process depends strongly on the ratio between the characteristic time scales of spontaneous photon emission and of the two level system's center of mass motion. In particular, if the spontaneous photon emission process occurs almost instantaneously on the time scale of the center of mass motion coherent control of the center of mass motion offers interesting perspectives for optimizing single photon absorption. It is demonstra…
Triply degenerate points (TDPs), which correspond to new types of topological semimetals, can support novel quasiparticles possessing effective integer spins while preserving Fermi statistics. Here by mapping the momentum space to the parameter space of a three-level system in a trapped ion, we experimentally explore the transitions between different types of TDPs driven by spin-tensor--momentum couplings. We observe the phase transitions between TDPs with different topological charges by measuring the Berry flux on a loop surrounding the gap-closing lines, and the jump of the Berry flux gives…
We propose two quantum error correction schemes which increase the maximum storage time for qubits in a system of cold trapped ions, using a minimal number of ancillary qubits. Both schemes consider only the errors introduced by the decoherence due to spontaneous emission from the upper levels of the ions. Continuous monitoring of the ion fluorescence is used in conjunction with selective coherent feedback to eliminate these errors immediately following spontaneous emission events, and the conditional time evolution between quantum jumps is removed by symmetrizing the quantum codewords.
A new class of error-correcting quantum codes is introduced capable of stabilizing qubits against spontaneous decay arising from couplings to statistically independent reservoirs. These quantum codes are based on the idea of using an embedded quantum code and exploiting the classical information available about which qubit has been affected by the environment. They are immediately relevant for quantum computation and information processing using arrays of trapped ions or nuclear spins. Interesting relations between these quantum codes and basic notions of design theory are established.
We propose an entanglement generation scheme that requires neither the coherent evolution of a quantum system nor the detection of single photons. Instead, the desired state is heralded by a {\em macroscopic} quantum jump. Macroscopic quantum jumps manifest themselves as a random telegraph signal with long intervals of intense fluorescence (light periods) interrupted by the complete absence of photons (dark periods). Here we show that a system of two atoms trapped inside an optical cavity can be designed such that a dark period prepares the atoms in a maximally entangled ground state. Achievin…
We showed that in Lamb-Dicke regime and under rotating wave approximation, the dynamical behavior of two trapped ions interacting with a laser beam resonant to the first red side-band of center-of-mass mode can be described by Jaynes-Cummings Model. An exact analytic solution for this kind of Jaynes-Cummings model is presented. The results showed that quantum collapses and revivals for the occupation of two atoms, and squeezing for vibratic motion of center-of-mass mode existed in both two different types of initial conditions. The maximum momentum squeezing for center-of-mass mode in these tw…
An exactly solvable model mimicking demixing of two Bose-Einstein condensates at the many-body level of theory is devised. Various properties are expressed in closed form along the demixing pathway and investigated. The connection between the center-of-mass coordinate and in particular the relative center-of-mass coordinate and demixing is explained. The model is also exactly solvable at the mean-field level of theory, allowing thereby comparison between many-body and mean-field properties. Applications are briefly discussed.
In a fundamental test of quantum mechanics, we have observed 228~000 quantum jumps of a single trapped and laser cooled $^{88}$Sr$^+$ ion. This represents a statistical increase of two orders of magnitude over previous similar analyses of quantum jumps. Compared to other searches for non-randomness in quantum mechanical processes, using quantum jumps simplifies the interpretation of data by eliminated multi-particle effects and providing near-unit detection efficiency of transitions. We measure the fractional reduction in the entropy of information to be $< 6.5~10^{-4}$ when the value of any i…
Controlling the motion of macroscopic oscillators in the quantum regime has been the subject of intense research in recent decades. In this direction, opto-mechanical systems, where the motion of micro-objects is strongly coupled with laser light radiation pressure, have had tremendous success. In particular, the motion of levitating objects can be manipulated at the quantum level thanks to their very high isolation from the environment under ultra-low vacuum conditions. To enter the quantum regime, schemes using single long-lived atomic spins, such as the electronic spin of nitrogen-vacancy (…
A k-quantum nonlinear Jaynes-Cummings model for two trapped ions interacting with laser beams resonant to k-th red side-band of center-of-mass mode, far from Lamb-Dicke regime, has been obtained. The exact analytic solution showed the existence of quantum collapses and revivals of the occupation of two atoms.
We demonstrate that it is possible, with sub-micron precision, to locate the absolute center of a Fabry-Pérot resonator oriented along the rf-field-free axis of a linear Paul trap through the application of two simultaneously resonating optical fields. In particular, we apply a probe field, which is near-resonant with an electronic transition of trapped ions, simultaneously with an off-resonant strong field acting as a periodic AC Stark-shifting potential. Through the resulting spatially modulated fluorescence signal we can find the cavity center of an 11.7 mm-long symmetric Fabry- Pérot cavit…
In the spirit of Quantum Non-Demolition Measurements, we show that exploiting suitable vibronic couplings and repeatedly measuring the atomic population of a confined ion, it is possible to distill center of mass vibrational states with well defined square of angular momentum or, alternatively, angular momentum projection Schrödinger cat states.
The recoil effects of spontaneous photon emissions during optical pumping of a trapped three-level atom are exactly calculated. Without resort to the Lamb-Dicke approximation, and considering arbitrary detuning and saturation of the pump laser, the density of recoil shifts in phase space is derived. It is shown that this density is not of Gaussian shape, and that it becomes isotropic in phase space only for a branching ratio corresponding to fluorescence scattering but unfavorable for optical pumping. The dependence of its anisotropy on the laser saturation is discussed in the resonant case, a…
We present a novel method of performing quantum logic gates in trapped ion quantum computers which does not require the ions to be cooled down to their vibrational center of mass (CM) mode ground state. Our scheme employs adiabatic passages and the conditional phase shift first investigated by D'Helon and Milburn (C.~D'Helon and G.J.~Milburn, Phys. Rev. A {\bf 54}, 5141 (1996)).
We propose a method to create two-mode squeezed states and their superposition in the center-of-mass mode and breathing mode of two-trapped ions. Each ion is illuminated simultaneously by two standing waves. One of the fields is tuned to excite resonantly and simultaneously both upper sidebands of the two normal modes, while the other field tuned to the corresponding lower sidebands.
Quantum interferometers are generally set so that phase differences between paths in coordinate space combine constructive or destructively. Indeed, the interfering paths can also meet in momentum space leading to momentum-space fringes. We propose and analyze a method to produce interference in momentum space by phase-imprinting part of a trapped atomic cloud with a detuned laser. For one-particle wave functions analytical expressions are found for the fringe width and shift versus the phase imprinted. The effects of unsharpness or displacement of the phase jump are also studied, as well as m…
The scheme recently proposed in [M. Scala et al., Phys Rev Lett 111, 180403 (2013)], where a gravity-dependent phase shift is induced on the spin of a nitrogen-vacancy (NV) center in a trapped nanodiamond by the interaction between its magnetic moment and the quantized motion of the particle, provides a way to detect spatial quantum superpositions by means of spin measurements only. Here, the effect of unwanted coupling with other motional degrees of freedom is considered and we show that it does not affect the validity of the scheme. Both this coupling and the additional error source due to m…
We explore and develop the mathematics of the two multi-level ions. In particular, we describe some new features of quantum entanglement in two three-level trapped ions confined in a one-dimensional harmonic potential, allowing the instantaneous position of the center-of-mass motion of the ions to be explicitly time-dependent. By solving the exact dynamics of the system, we show how survivability of the quantum entanglement is determined by a specific choice of the initial state settings.
System of a two-flavor mixture of ultra-cold fermions confined in a one-dimensional harmonic trap is studied in the frame of the center of mass. We present a numerical method of obtaining energetic spectra in this frame for an arbitrary mass ratio of fermionic species. We identify a specific invariant encoded in many-body correlations which enable one to determine an eigenstate of the Hamiltonian and to label excitations of the center of mass. The tool presented may be particularly useful in experimental analysis of the interparticle interactions which do not affect the center of mass excitati…
A microscopic system under continuous observation exhibits at random times sudden jumps between its states. The detection of this essential quantum feature requires a quantum non-demolition (QND) measurement repeated many times during the system evolution. Quantum jumps of trapped massive particles (electrons, ions or molecules) have been observed, which is not the case of the jumps of light quanta. Usual photodetectors absorb light and are thus unable to detect the same photon twice. They must be replaced by a transparent counter 'seeing' photons without destroying them3. Moreover, the light …
Dissipation, the irreversible loss of energy and coherence, from a microsystem, is the result of coupling to a much larger macrosystem (or reservoir) which is so large that one has no chance of keeping track of all of its degrees of freedom. The microsystem evolution is then described by tracing over the reservoir states, resulting in an irreversible decay as excitation leaks out of the initially excited microsystems into the outer reservoir environment. Earlier treatments of this dissipation described an ensemble of microsystems using density matrices, either in Schroedinger picture with Mast…
The physics of Markovian open quantum systems can be described by quantum master equations. These are dynamical equations, that incorporate the Hamiltonian and jump operators, and generate the system's time evolution. Reconstructing the system's Hamiltonian and and its coupling to the environment from measurements is important both for fundamental research as well as for performance-evaluation of quantum machines. In this paper we introduce a method that reconstructs the dynamical equation of open quantum systems, directly from a set of expectation values of selected observables. We benchmark …
Using an optical tweezers apparatus, we demonstrate three-dimensional control of nanodiamonds in solution with simultaneous readout of ground-state electron-spin resonance (ESR) transitions in an ensemble of diamond nitrogen-vacancy (NV) color centers. Despite the motion and random orientation of NV centers suspended in the optical trap, we observe distinct peaks in the measured ESR spectra qualitatively similar to the same measurement in bulk. Accounting for the random dynamics, we model the ESR spectra observed in an externally applied magnetic field to enable d.c. magnetometry in solution. …
We investigate the spatial motion of the trapped atom with the electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) configuration where the two Rabi transitions are coupled to two classical light fields respectively with the same detuning. When the internal degrees of freedom can be decoupled adiabatically from the spatial motion of the center of mass via the Born-Oppenheimer approximation, it is demonstrated that the lights of certain profile can provide the atom with an effective field of magnetic monopole, which is the so-called induced gauge field relevant to the Berry's phase. Such an artificia…
We investigate theoretically the spectrum of resonance fluorescence of a harmonically trapped atom, whose internal transitions are $Λ$--shaped and driven at two-photon resonance by a pair of lasers, which cool the center--of--mass motion. For this configuration, photons are scattered only due to the mechanical effects of the quantum interaction between light and atom. We study the spectrum of emission in the final stage of laser--cooling, when the atomic center-of-mass dynamics is quantum mechanical and the size of the wave packet is much smaller than the laser wavelength (Lamb--Dicke limit). …
We study the counterpart to the multi-photon down conversion in the quantised motion of a trapped atom. The Lamb-Dicke approximation leads to a divergence of the mean motional excitation in a finite interaction time for k-quantum down conversions with k>=3, analogous to the situation in the parametric approximation of nonlinear optics. We show that, in contrast to the Lamb-Dicke approximation, the correct treatment of the overlap of the atomic center-of-mass wave function and the driving laser waves leads to a proper dynamics without any divergence problem. That is, the wavy nature of both mat…
We report preparation in the ground state of collective modes of motion of two trapped 9Be+ ions. This is a crucial step towards realizing quantum logic gates which can entangle the ions' internal electronic states. We find that heating of the modes of relative ion motion is substantially suppressed relative to that of the center-of-mass modes, suggesting the importance of these modes in future experiments.
We theoretically analyze the cooling dynamics of an atom which is tightly trapped inside a high-finesse optical resonator. Cooling is achieved by suitably tailored scattering processes, in which the atomic dipole transition either scatters a cavity photon into the electromagnetic field external to the resonator, or performs a stimulated emission into the cavity mode, which then dissipates via the cavity mirrors. We identify the parameter regimes in which the atom center-of-mass motion can be cooled into the ground state of the external trap. We predict, in particular, that for high cooperativi…
We investigate the interplay dynamics of a cavity qed system, where the two-level atoms are trapped in a double-well potential, and the cavity mode, with a frequency largely detuned to the atomic level splitting, is driven by a probe laser. The interaction between the center-of-mass motion of the atoms and the cavity mode is induced by the position dependent atom-field coupling. The dynamics of the system is characterized by two distinct time scales, the inverse of the atomic interwell tunneling rate and the inverse of the cavity loss rate. The system shows drastically different (quasi) steady…
We propose a scheme to realize universal quantum gates between nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centers in an optically trapped nanodiamond, through uniform magnetic field induced coupling between the NV centers and the torsional mode of the levitated nanodiamond. The gates are tolerant to the thermal noise of the torsional mode. By combining the scheme with dynamical decoupling technology, it is found that the high fidelity quantum gates are possible for the present experimental conditions. The proposed scheme is useful for NV-center-based quantum network and distributed quantum computation
In this letter, atom optic techniques are proposed to control the excitation of a Bose-Einstein condensate in an atomic trap. We show that by employing the dipole potential induced by four highly detuned travelling-wave laser beams with appropriate phases and frequencies, one can coherently excite a trapped Bose-Einstein condensate composed of ultracold alkali atoms into a state rotating around the trap center. The connection to vortex states is discussed.
A continuously monitored quantum system prepared in an excited state will decay to its ground state with an abrupt jump. The jump occurs stochastically on a characteristic time scale T1, the lifetime of the excited state. These quantum jumps, originally envisioned by Bohr, have been observed in trapped atoms and ions, single molecules, photons, and single electrons in cyclotrons. Here we report the first observation of quantum jumps in a macroscopic quantum system, in our case a superconducting "artificial atom" or quantum bit (qubit) coupled to a superconducting microwave cavity. We use a fas…
When the scattering length is proportional to the distance from the center of the system, two particles are shown to be trapped about the center. Furthermore, their spectrum exhibits discrete scale invariance, whose scale factor is controlled by the slope of the scattering length. While this resembles the Efimov effect, our system has a number of advantages when realized with ultracold atoms. We also elucidate how the emergent discrete scaling symmetry is violated for more than two bosons, which may shed new light on Efimov physics. Our system thus serves as a tunable model system to investiga…
Since the early work by Ashkin in 1970, optical trapping has become one of the most powerful tools for manipulating small particles, such as micron sized beads or single atoms. The optical trapping mechanism is based on the interaction energy of a dipole and the electric field of the laser light. In atom trapping, the dominant contribution typically comes from the allowed optical transition closest to the laser wavelength, whereas for mesoscopic particles it is given by the bulk polarizability of the material. These two different regimes of optical trapping have coexisted for decades without a…
We consider a homogeneous gas of spin-S fermionic atoms, as might occur near the center of an optical trap. In the case where all scattering lengths are negative and of the same magnitude we demonstrate the instability of the Fermi sea to the condensation of bound `baryonic' composites containing 2S+1 atoms. The gap in the excitation spectrum is calculated.
We demonstrate a spatial-imaging thermometry technique for ions in a one-dimensional Coulomb crystal by relating their imaged spatial extent along the linear radiofrequency ion trap axis to normal modes of vibration of coupled oscillators in a harmonic potential. We also use the thermal spatial spread of bright ions in the case of a two-species mixed chain to measure the center-of-mass (COM) resonance frequency of the entire chain and infer the molecular composition of the co-trapped dark ions. These non-destructive techniques create new possibilities for better understanding of sympathetic co…
In a closed single-particle quantum system, spatial disorder induces Anderson localization of eigenstates and halts wave propagation. The phenomenon is vulnerable to interaction with environment and decoherence, that is believed to restore normal diffusion. We demonstrate that for a class of experimentally feasible non-Hermitian dissipators, which admit signatures of localization in asymptotic states, quantum particle opts between diffusive and ballistic regimes, depending on the phase parameter of dissipators, with sticking about localization centers. In diffusive regime, statistics of quantu…
We propose a new scalable architecture for trapped ion quantum computing that combines optical tweezers delivering qubit state-dependent local potentials with oscillating electric fields. Since the electric field allows for long-range qubit-qubit interactions mediated by the center-of-mass motion of the ion crystal alone, it is inherently scalable to large ion crystals. Furthermore, our proposed scheme does not rely on either ground state cooling or the Lamb-Dicke approximation. We study the effects of imperfect cooling of the ion crystal, as well as the role of unwanted qubit-motion entanglem…
Improving coherence is a fundamental challenge in quantum simulation and sensing experiments with trapped ions. Here we discuss, experimentally demonstrate, and estimate the potential impacts of two different protocols that enhance, through motional parametric excitation, the coherent spin-motion coupling of ions obtained with a spin-dependent force. The experiments are performed on 2D crystal arrays of approximately one hundred $^9$Be$^+$ ions confined in a Penning trap. By modulating the trapping potential at close to twice the center-of-mass mode frequency, we squeeze the motional mode and …
We discover quantum Hall like jumps in the saturation spectral rigidity in the semiclassical spectrum of a modified Kepler problem as a function of the interval center. These jumps correspond to integer decreases of the radial winding numbers in classical periodic motion. We also discover and explain single harmonic dominated oscillations of the level number variance with the width of the energy interval. The level number variance becomes effectively zero for the interval widths defined by the frequency of the shortest periodic orbit. This signifies that there are virtually no variations from …
