Using simple physical arguments we investigate the capabilities of a quantum computer based on cold trapped ions. From the limitations imposed on such a device by spontaneous decay, laser phase coherence, ion heating and other sources of error, we derive a bound between the number of laser interactions and the number of ions that may be used. The largest number which may be factored using a variety of species of ion is determined.
The decoherence in trapped ion induced by coupling the ion to the engineered reservoir is studied in this paper. The engineered reservoir is simulated by random variations in the trap frequency, and the trapped ion is treated as a two-level system driven by a far off-resonant plane wave laser field. The dependence of the decoherence rate on the amplitude of the superposition state is given.
The decoherence of nonclassical motional states of a trapped $^9 {\rm Be^+}$ ion in a recent experiment is investigated theoretically. Sources of decoherence considered here destroy the characteristic coherent quantum dynamics of the system but do not cause energy dissipation. Here they are first introduced phenomenologically and then described using a microscopic Hamiltonian formulation. Theoretical predictions are compared to experimental results.
We present a nonlinear decoherence model which models decoherence effect caused by various decohereing sources in a quantum system through a nonlinear coupling between the system and its environment, and apply it to investigating decoherence in nonclassical motional states of a single trapped ion. We obtain an exactly analytic solution of the model and find very good agreement with experimental results for the population decay rate of a single trapped ion observed in the NIST experiments by Meekhof and coworkers (D. M. Meekhof, {\it et al.}, Phys. Rev. Lett. {\bf 76}, 1796 (1996)).
The control of thermal decoherence via dynamical decoupling and via the quantum Zeno effect (Zeno control) is investigated for a model of trapped ion, where the dynamics of two low lying hyperfine states undergoes decoherence due to the thermal interaction with an excited state. Dynamical decoupling is a procedure that consists in periodically driving the excited state, while the Zeno control consists in frequently measuring it. When the control frequency is high enough, decoherence is shown to be suppressed. Otherwise, both controls may accelerate decoherence.
We consider interactions that generate a universal set of quantum gates on logical qubits encoded in a collective-dephasing-free subspace, and discuss their implementations with trapped ions. This allows for the removal of the by-far largest source of decoherence in current trapped-ion experiments, collective dephasing. In addition, an explicit parametrization of all two-body Hamiltonians able to generate such gates without the system's state ever exiting the protected subspace is provided.
We propose a decoherence-free subspaces (DFS) scheme to realize scalable quantum computation with trapped ions. The spin-dependent Coulomb interaction is exploited, and the universal set of unconventional geometric quantum gates is achieved in encoded subspaces that are immune from decoherence by collective dephasing. The scalability of the scheme for the ion array system is demonstrated, either by an adiabatic way of switching on and off the interactions, or by a fast gate scheme with comprehensive DFS encoding and noise decoupling techniques.
We propose a feasible scheme to achieve holonomic quantum computation in a decoherence-free subspace (DFS) with trapped ions. By the application of appropriate bichromatic laser fields on the designated ions, we are able to construct two noncommutable single-qubit gates and one controlled-phase gate using the holonomic scenario in the encoded DFS.
We study the entanglement between the 2D vibrational motion and two ground state hyperfine levels of a trapped ion, Under particular conditions this entanglement depends on the parity of the total initial vibrational quanta. We study the robustness of this quantum coherence effect with respect to the presence of non-dissipative sources of decoherence, and of an imperfect initial state preparation.
Decoherence time has been calculated for an optical ion trap of Be atoms in a bistable potential model. Comparison has been made between decoherence time and Zeno time for double well potential as a special case. Zeno time is considered as a lower limit of decoherence time for sustainable quantum coherence. Equality of the respective timescales provides a certain transitional temperature, below which decoherence can be asymptotically minimized.
We propose a geometric phase gate in a decoherence-free subspace with trapped ions. The quantum information is encoded in the Zeeman sublevels of the ground-state and two physical qubits to make up one logical qubit with ultra long coherence time. Single- and two-qubit operations together with the transport and splitting of linear ion crystals allow for a robust and decoherence-free scalable quantum processor. For the ease of the phase gate realization we employ one Raman laser field on four ions simultaneously, i.e. no tight focus for addressing. The decoherence-free subspace is left neither …
Analysis of the effects of decoherence on the radiative and squeezing properties of a coherently driven two-level atom trapped in a resonant cavity applying the corresponding master equation is presented. The atomic dynamics as well as the squeezing and statistical properties of the emitted radiation are investigated. It is found that the atom stays in the lower energy level more often at steady state irrespective of the strength of the coherent radiation and thermal fluctuations entering the cavity. Moreover, a strong external coherent radiation results the splitting of the line of the emissi…
By means of the Ising terms generated by Coulomb interaction between ions and the magnetic field gradient, we carry out teleportation with insurance with trapped ions. We show the feasibility and the favorable feature of our scheme by comparing with the recently achieved teleportation experiments with trapped ions.
The theory of interactions between lasers and cold trapped ions as it pertains to the design of Cirac-Zoller quantum computers is discussed. The mean positions of the trapped ions, the eigenvalues and eigenmodes of the ions' oscillations, the magnitude of the Rabi frequencies for both allowed and forbidden internal transitions of the ions and the validity criterion for the required Hamiltonian are calculated. Energy level data for a variety of ion species is also presented.
We propose a novel scheme to implement a quantum controlled phase gate for trapped ions in thermal motion with one standing wave laser pulse. Instead of applying the rotating wave approximation this scheme makes use of the counter-rotating terms of operators. We also demonstrate that the same scheme can be used to generate maximally entangled states of $N$ trapped ions by a single laser pulse.
We describe the optimal realization of entangling quantum gates for trapped ions mediated by a dissipative bus mode. With suitably shaped control pulses one can substantially decrease ion-phonon entanglement while maintaining the mediated interaction.
Decoherence is studied in an attractive proposal for an actual implementation of a quantum computer based on trapped ions. Emphasis is placed on the decoherence arising from the vibrational motion of the ions, which is compared with that due to spontaneous emission from excited states of the ions. The calculation is made tractable by exploiting the vast difference in time scales between the vibrational excitations and the intra-ionic electronic excitations. Since the latter are several orders of magnitude faster, an adiabatic approximation is used to integrate them out and find the inclusive p…
We propose a scheme to implement quantum phase gate for two $Λ$ ions trapped in optical cavity. It is shown that quantum phase gate can be implemented by applying a laser addressing to a single ions in strongly detuned optical cavity. We further demonstrate that geometric quantum phase gate can be implemented by introducing a auxiliary ground state.
A "continuous measurement" Quantum Zeno Effect (QZE) in the context of trapped ions is predicted. We describe the physical system and study its exact time evolution showing the appearance of Zeno Phenomena. New indicators for the occurrence of QZE in oscillatory systems are proposed and carefully discussed.
We propose and demonstrate a scalable scheme for the simultaneous determination of internal and motional states in trapped ions with single-site resolution. The scheme is applied to the study of polaritonic excitations in the Jaynes- Cummings Hubbard model with trapped ions, in which the internal and motional states of the ions are strongly correlated. We observe quantum phase transitions of polaritonic excitations in two ions by directly evaluating their variances per ion site. Our work establishes an essential technological method for large-scale quantum simulations of polaritonic systems.
There has been much interest in developing methods for transferring quantum information. We discuss a way to transfer quantum information between two trapped ions through a wire. The motion of a trapped ion induces oscillating charges in the trap electrodes. By sending this current to the electrodes of a nearby second trap, the motions of ions in the two traps are coupled. We investigate the electrostatics of a set-up where two separately trapped ions are coupled through an electrically floating wire. We also discuss experimental issues, including possible sources of decoherence.
Coherent operations constitutive for the implementation of single and multi-qubit quantum gates with trapped ions are demonstrated that are robust against variations in experimental parameters and intrinsically indeterministic system parameters. In particular, pulses developed using optimal control theory are demonstrated for the first time with trapped ions. Their performance as a function of error parameters is systematically investigated and compared to composite pulses.
We investigate the mechanism of damping and heating of trapped ions associated with the polarization of the residual background gas induced by the oscillating ions themselves. Reasoning by analogy with the physics of surface electrons in liquid helium, we demonstrate that the decay of Rabi oscillations observed in experiments on 9Be+ can be attributed to the polarization phenomena investigated here. The measured sensitivity of the damping of Rabi oscillations with respect to the vibrational quantum number of a trapped ion is also predicted in our polarization model.
We demonstrate tunable spin-spin couplings between trapped atomic ions, mediated by laser forces on multiple transverse collective modes of motion. A $σ_x σ_x$-type Ising interaction is realized between quantum bits stored in the ground hyperfine clock states of Yb ions. We demonstrate entangling gates and tailor the spin-spin couplings with two and three trapped ions. The use of closely-spaced transverse modes provides a new class of interactions relevant to quantum computing and simulation with large collections of ions in a single crystal.
We propose to use a large cloud of cold trapped ions as a medium for quantum optics and quantum information experiments. Contrary to most recent realizations of qubit manipulation based on a small number of trapped and cooled ions, we study the case of traps containing a macroscopic number of ions. We consider in particular the implementation of a quantum memory for quantum information stored in continuous variables and study the impact of the relevant physical parameters on the expected performances of the system.
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 propose a method for generating maximally entangled states of N two-level trapped ions. The method is deterministic and independent of the number of ions in the trap. It involves a controlled-NOT acting simultaneously on all the ions through a dispersive interaction. We explore the potential application of our scheme for high precision frequency standards.
Invariant-based inverse engineering is an elegant approach to quantum control with corresponding experimental implementations that perform tasks with applications in quantum information processing such as shuttling trapped ions. We build on recent work to generalise invariant-based inverse engineering to control two coupled harmonic oscillators in any number of spatial dimensions. This may be used to perform experimentally relevant tasks such as separation of trapped ions, which is demonstrated numerically, achieving transfer fidelities of over 96% as well as low motional number excitations.
We propose a simple technique for the generation of arbitrary-sized Dicke states in a chain of trapped ions. The method uses global addressing of the entire chain by two pairs of delayed but partially overlapping laser pulses to engineer a collective adiabatic passage along a multi-ion dark state. Our technique, which is a many-particle generalization of stimulated Raman adiabatic passage (STIRAP), is decoherence-free with respect to spontaneous emission and robust against moderate fluctuations in the experimental parameters. Furthermore, because the process is very rapid, the effects of heati…
We analyse the effects of intrinsic decoherence on the probability of generating a tripartite GHZ state using a cool trapped ion coupled to a single mode of the cavity field and interacting with a resonant laser field. Milburn equation is solved for this tripartite system to obtain the time evolution of density matrix as a function of cavity-ion coupling, laser-ion coupling, and the size of unitary time step relative to the time scale determined by system parameters. Starting with the system prepared initially in a separable state, density matrix is used to calculate the probability of tripart…
The mode-mode entanglement between trapped ions and cavity fields is investigated in the dispersive regime. We show how a simple initial preparation of Gaussian coherent states and a postselection may be used to generate motional non-local mesoscopic states (NLMS) involving ions in different traps. We also present a study of the entanglement induced by dynamical Stark-shifts considering a cluster of N-trapped ions. In this case, all entanglement is due to the dependence of the Stark-shifts on the ions' state of motion manifested as a cross-Kerr interaction between each ion and the field.
We propose a scheme to perform a fundamental two-qubit gate between two trapped ions using ideas from atom interferometry. As opposed to the scheme considered by J. I. Cirac and P. Zoller, Phys. Rev. Lett. 74, 4091 (1995), it does not require laser cooling to the motional ground state.
Individual electrodynamically trapped and laser cooled ions are addressed in frequency space using radio-frequency radiation in the presence of a static magnetic field gradient. In addition, an interaction between motional and spin states induced by an rf field is demonstrated employing rf-optical double resonance spectroscopy. These are two essential experimental steps towards realizing a novel concept for implementing quantum simulations and quantum computing with trapped ions.
Essentially all known quantum gates rely on a weak-coupling approximation resulting in linear dynamics. With the explicit example of trapped ions, we show how high-fidelity quantum gates can be achieved outside such an approximation, and we derive readily implementable driving fields to realize gates with extremely high fidelities for ions well outside the Lamb-Dicke regime with motional temperatures achievable by only Doppler cooling.
We show how to create quantum gates of arbitrary speed between trapped ions, using a laser walking wave, with complete insensitivity to drift of the optical phase, and requiring cooling only to the Lamb-Dicke regime. We present pulse sequences that satisfy the requirements and are easy to produce in the laboratory.
We study two trapped ions coupled to the axial phonon modes of a one-dimensional Coulomb crystal. This system is formally equivalent to the "two spin-boson" model. We propose a scheme to dynamically generate a maximally entangled state of two ions within a decoherence-free subspace. Here the phononic environment of the trapped ions, whatever its temperature and number of modes, serves as the entangling bus. The efficient production of the pure singlet state can be exploited to perform short-ranged quantum communication which is essential in building up a large-scale quantum computer.
We propose a method to manipulate the normal modes in a chain of trapped ions using only two lasers. Linear chains of trapped ions have proven experimentally to be highly controllable quantum systems with a variety of refined techniques for preparation, evolution, and readout, however, typically for quantum information processing applications people have been interested in using the internal levels of the ions as the computational basis. We analyse the case where the motional degrees of freedom of the ions is the quantum system of interest, and where the internal levels are leveraged to facili…
Internal states of different ions in an electrodynamic trap are coupled when a static magnetic field is applied -- analogous to spin-spin coupling in molecules used for NMR. This spin-spin interaction can be used, for example, to implement quantum logic operations in ion traps using NMR methods. The collection of trapped ions can be viewed as a $N$-qubit molecule with adjustable coupling constants.
We analyze collisional decoherence of atoms or molecules prepared in a coherent superposition of nondegenerate internal states at ultralow temperatures and placed in an ultracold buffer gas. Our analysis is applicable for an arbitrary bath particle/tracer particle mass ratio. Both elastic and inelastic collisions contribute to decoherence. We obtain an expression relating the observable decoherence rate to pairwise scattering properties, specifically the low-temperature scattering amplitudes. We consider the dependence on the bath particle/tracer particle mass ratio for the case of light bath …
We investigate the non-dissipative decoherence of three qubit system obtained by manipulating the state of a trapped two-level ion coupled to an optical cavity. Modelling the environment as a set of noninteracting harmonic oscillators, analytical expressions for the state operator of tripartite composite system, the probability of generating maximally entangled GHZ state, and the population inversion have been obtained. The pointer observable is the energy of the isolated quantum system. Coupling to environment results in exponential decay of off diagonal matrix elements of the state operator …
We study theoretically the collective E$\otimes$e Jahn-Teller-Dicke distortion in a system of trapped ions. We focus in the limit of infinite range interactions in which an ensemble of effective spins interacts with two collective vibrational modes with U(1) symmetric couplings. Our model is exactly solvable in the thermodynamical limit and it is amenable to be solved by exact numerical diagonalization for a moderate number of ions. We show that trapped ions are ideally suited to study the emergence of spontaneous symmetry breaking of a continuous symmetry and magnetic structural phase transit…
We analyze nonlinear coupling between individual vibrational quanta for trapped ions. The nonlinear Coulomb interaction causes a Kerr-type Hamiltonian, for which we derive an analytical expression for the coupling constant. In contrast to a previously published formula [1], our result is in close agreement with experimental data.
We describe a possible architecture to implement a universal bosonic simulator (UBS) using trapped ions. Single ions are confined in individual traps, and their motional states represent the bosonic modes. Single-mode linear operators, nonlinear phase-shifts, and linear beam splitters can be realized by precisely controlling the trapping potentials. All the processes in a bosonic simulation, except the initialization and the readout, can be conducted beyond the Lamb-Dicke regime. Aspects of our proposal can also be applied to split adiabatically a pair of ions in a single trap.
Based on the exact conditional quantum dynamics for a two-ion system, we propose an efficient {\it single-step} scheme for coherently manipulating quantum information of two trapped cold ions by using a pair of synchronous laser pulses. Neither the auxiliary atomic level nor the Lamb-Dicke approximation are needed.
We collect the fluorescence from two trapped atomic ions, and measure quantum interference between photons emitted from the ions. The interference of two photons is a crucial component of schemes to entangle atomic qubits based on a photonic coupling. The ability to preserve the generated entanglement and to repeat the experiment with the same ions is necessary to implement entangling quantum gates between atomic qubits, and allows the implementation of protocols to efficiently scale to larger numbers of atomic qubits.
We study the physical implementation of an optimal tomographic reconstruction scheme for the case of determining the state of a multi-qubit system, where trapped ions are used for defining qubits. The protocol is based on the use of mutually unbiased measurements and on the physical information described in H. Häffner \emph{et. al} [Nature \textbf{438}, 643-646 (2005)]. We introduce the concept of physical complexity for different types of unbiased measurements and analyze their generation in terms of one and two qubit gates for trapped ions.
We propose a potential scheme to generate entangled photons by manipulating trapped ions embedded in two-mode microcavities, respectively, assisted by a magnetic field gradient. By means of the spin-spin coupling due to the magnetic field gradient and the Coulomb repulsion between the ions, we show how to efficiently generate entangled photons by detecting the internal states of the trapped ions. We emphasize that our scheme is advantageous to create complete sets of entangled multi-photon states. The requirement and the experimental feasibility of our proposal are discussed in detail.
We show how to produce a fast quantum Rabi model with trapped ions. Its importance resides not only in the acceleration of the phenomena that may be achieved with these systems, from quantum gates to the generation of nonclassical states of the vibrational motion of the ion, but also in reducing unwanted effects such as the decay of coherences that may appear in such systems.
We apply estimation theory to a system formed by two interacting trapped ions. By using the Fisher matrix formalism, we introduce a simple scheme for estimation of the temperature of the longitudinal vibrational modes of the ions. We use the ions interaction to effectively infer the temperature of the individual ions, by optimising the interaction time evolution and by measuring only over one of the ions. We also investigate the effect of a non-thermal reservoir over the inference approach. The non-classicality of one of the ions vibrational modes, introduced due to a squeezed thermal reservoi…
We propose a scalable procedure to generate entangled superpositions of motional coherent states and electronic states in N trapped ions. Beyond their fundamental importance, these states may be of interest for quantum information processing and may be used in experimental studies of decoherence.
The control of internal and motional quantum degrees of freedom of laser cooled trapped ions has been subject to intense theoretical and experimental research for about three decades. In the realm of quantum information science the ability to deterministically prepare and measure quantum states of trapped ions is unprecedented. This expertise may be employed to investigate physical models conceived to describe systems that are not directly accessible for experimental investigations. Here, we give an overview of current theoretical proposals and experiments for such quantum simulations with tra…
We show how NOON states may be generated in ion traps. We use the individual interaction of light with each of two vibrational modes of the ion to entangle them. This allows us to generate NOON states with N=8.
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.
Entangling multiple qubits is one of the central tasks for quantum information processings. Here, we propose an approach to entangle a number of cold ions (individually trapped in a string of microtraps) by a moved cavity. The cavity is pushed to include the ions one by one with an uniform velocity, and thus the information stored in former ions could be transferred to the latter ones by such a moving cavity bus. Since the positions of the trapped ions are precisely located, the strengths and durations of the ion-cavity interactions can be exactly controlled. As a consequence, by properly sett…
The beam splitter and phase shifter, which are the key elements in the experiments of light interference, are realized in the motion of trapped ions. Some applications, such as the creation of quantum motional states and the realization of Mach-Zehnder interferometer, are illustrated. Several detection methods of motional states used in the interferometer are also discussed.
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 have experimentally observed the dynamics of a single polariton and two polaritons in a two-ion chain. By driving two trapped ions at a motional blue-sideband transition, we realize the anti-Jaynes-Cummings-Hubbard model. When a single polariton exists in a trapped-ion chain, the polariton hops between the ion sites. On the other hand, when there are single polaritons at each ion site, the hopping of the polaritons is suppressed because of the polariton-polariton interaction induced by the nonlinearity of the anti-Jaynes-Cummings interaction, thereby realizing the blockade of polariton hopp…
We demonstrate millikelvin thermometry of laser cooled trapped ions with high-resolution imaging. This equilibrium approach is independent of the cooling dynamics and has lower systematic error than Doppler thermometry, with \pm5 mK accuracy and \pm1 mK precision. We used it to observe highly anisotropic dynamics of a single ion, finding temperatures of < 60 mK and > 15 K simultaneously along different directions. This thermometry technique can offer new insights into quantum systems sympathetically cooled by ions, including atoms, molecules, nanomechanical oscillators, and electric circuits.
