Generation of pair coherent and cat states for the motion of two trapped ions

Shi‐Biao Zheng

Gou, Steinbach, Knight

Mahmoud Abdel‐Aty

Shi‐Biao Zheng

A scheme is proposed for generating motional pair coherent states of an ion in a two-dimensional anisotropic trap. In the scheme the ion is excited by two laser beams in the x - y plane. Under certain conditions, the system finally reaches the steady state given by the product of the ground electronic state with the motional pair coherent state. The scheme can be generalized to prepare pair cat states and two-mode SU (1,1) intelligent states in a two-dimensional anisotropic trap.

Shi‐Biao Zheng, Guang‐Can Guo

Shih-Chuan Gou, Jörg Steinbach, P. L. Knight

We propose a scheme for generating mesoscopic superpositions of two distinguishable pair coherent states of motion in a two-dimensional ion trap. In our scheme, the trapped ion is excited bichromatically by five laser beams along different directions in the X-Y plane of the ion trap. Four of these have the same frequency and can be derived from the same source, reducing the demands on the experimentalist. We show that if the initial vibrational state is given by a two-mode Fock state, as demonstrated in recent experiments, these highly correlated two-mode ``Schr\"odinger cat'' states are realized when the system reaches its steady state, which is indicated by the extinction of the fluorescence emitted by the ion. \textcopyright{} 1996 The American Physical Society.