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arXiv:1211.2842 · Physical Review A

Phonon-mediated quantum spin simulator employing a planar ionic crystal in a Penning trap

C.‐C. Joseph Wang, Adam C. Keith, James K. Freericks

Published Jan 22, 2013• 36 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

We derive the normal modes for a rotating Coulomb ion crystal in a Penning trap, quantize the motional degrees of freedom, and illustrate how they can be driven by a spin-dependent optical dipole force to create a quantum spin simulator on a triangular lattice with hundreds of spins. The analysis for the axial modes (oscillations perpendicular to the two-dimensional crystal plane) follow a standard normal-mode analysis, while the remaining planar modes are more complicated to analyze because they have velocity-dependent forces in the rotating frame. After quantizing the normal modes into phonons, we illustrate some of the different spin-spin interactions that can be generated by entangling the motional degrees of freedom with the spin degrees of freedom via a spin-dependent optical dipole force. In addition to the well-known power-law dependence of the spin-spin interactions when driving the axial modes blue of the phonon band, we notice certain parameter regimes in which the level of frustration between the spins can be engineered by driving the axial or planar phonon modes at different frequencies. These systems may allow for the analog simulation of quantum spin glasses with large numbers of spins.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.87.013422

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We derive the normal modes for a rotating Coulomb ion crystal in a Penning trap, quantize the motional degrees of freedom, and illustrate how they can be driven by a spin-dependent optical dipole force to create a quantum spin simulator on a triangular lattice with hundreds of spins. The analysis for the axial modes (oscillations perpendicular to the two-dimensional crystal plane) follow a standard normal-mode analysis, while the remaining planar modes are more complicated to analyze because they have velocity-dependent forces in the rotating frame. After quantizing the normal modes into phonons, we illustrate some of the different spin-spin interactions that can be generated by entangling the motional degrees of freedom with the spin degrees of freedom via a spin-dependent optical dipole force. In addition to the well-known power-law dependence of the spin-spin interactions when driving the axial modes blue of the phonon band, we notice certain parameter regimes in which the level of frustration between the spins can be engineered by driving the axial or planar phonon modes at different frequencies. These systems may allow for the analog simulation of quantum spin glasses with large numbers of spins.
One of the challenges with quantum simulation in ion traps is that the effective spin-spin exchange couplings are not uniform across the lattice. This can be particularly important in Penning-trap realizations where the presence of an ellipsoidal boundary at the edge of the trap leads to dislocations in the crystal. By adding an additional anharmonic potential to better control interion spacing, and a triangular-shaped rotating wall potential to reduce the appearance of dislocations, one can achieve better uniformity of the ionic positions. In this work, we calculate the axial phonon frequencies and the spin-spin interactions driven by a spin-dependent optical dipole force, and discuss what effects the more uniform ion spacing have on the spin simulation properties of Penning-trap quantum simulators. Indeed, we find that the spin-spin interactions behave more like a power law for a wide range of parameters.
We generalize the analysis of the normal modes for a rotating ionic Coulomb crystal in a Penning trap to allow for inhomogeneities in the system. Our formal developments are completely general, but we choose to examine a crystal of Be+{}^{+}+ ions with BeH+{}^{+}+ defects to compare with current experimental efforts. We examine the classical phonon modes (both transverse and planar) and we determine the effective spin-spin interactions when the system is driven by an axial spin-dependent optical dipole force. We examine situations with up to approximately 15% defects. We find that most properties are not strongly influenced by the defects, indicating that the presence of a small number of defects will not significantly affect experiments.
We develop the theory to describe the equilibrium ion positions and phonon modes for a trapped ion quantum simulator in an oblate Paul trap that creates two-dimensional Coulomb crystals in a triangular lattice. By coupling the internal states of the ions to laser beams propagating along the symmetry axis, we study the effective Ising spin-spin interactions that are mediated via the axial phonons and are less sensitive to ion micromotion. We find that the axial mode frequencies permit the programming of Ising interactions with inverse power law spin-spin couplings that can be tuned from uniform to with DC voltages. Such a trap could allow for interesting new geometrical configurations for quantum simulations on moderately sized systems including frustrated magnetism on triangular lattices or Aharonov-Bohm effects on ion tunneling. The trap also incorporates periodic boundary conditions around loops which could be employed to examine time crystals.
Quantum simulation of interacting many-body spin systems is routinely performed with cold trapped ions, and systems with hundreds of spins have been studied in one and two dimensions. In the most common realizations of these platforms, spin degrees of freedom are encoded in low-lying electronic levels, and interactions among the spins are mediated through crystal vibrations. Here we propose a new approach which enables the quantum simulation of two-dimensional spin systems with interaction strengths that are increased by orders of magnitude. This, together with the unprecedented longevity of trapped ions, opens an avenue for the exploration of phenomena that take place on long timescales, e.g., slow and collective relaxation in frustrated and kinetically constrained systems. Our platform makes use of the strong dipolar interactions among electronic Rydberg states and planar confinement provided by a Penning trap. We investigate how the strong electric and magnetic fields that form this trap affect the properties of the Rydberg states and show that spin-spin interaction strengths on the order of MHz are achievable under experimentally realistic conditions. As a brief illustration of the capabilities of this quantum simulator, we study the entanglement in a frustrated spin system realized by three ions.
We propose a trapped ion scheme en route to realize spin Hamiltonians on a Kagome lattice which, at low energies, are described by emergent gauge fields, and support a topological quantum spin liquid ground state. The enabling element in our scheme is the hexagonal plaquette spin–spin interactions in a two-dimensional ion crystal. For this, the phonon-mode spectrum of the crystal is engineered by standing-wave optical potentials or by using Rydberg excited ions, thus generating localized phonon-modes around a hexagon of ions selected out of the entire two-dimensional crystal. These tailored modes can mediate spin–spin interactions between ion-qubits on a hexagonal plaquette when subject to state-dependent optical dipole forces. We discuss how these interactions can be employed to emulate a generalized Balents–Fisher–Girvin model in minimal instances of one and two plaquettes. This model is an archetypical Hamiltonian in which gauge fields are the emergent degrees of freedom on top of the classical ground state manifold. Under realistic situations, we show the emergence of a discrete Gauss's law as well as the dynamics of a deconfined charge excitation on a gauge-invariant background using the two-plaquettes trapped ions spin-system. The proposed scheme in principle allows further scaling in a future trapped ion quantum simulator, and we conclude that our work will pave the way towards the simulation of emergent gauge theories and quantum spin liquids in trapped ion systems.