Zitterbewegung physics in a single trapped ion

Tao Liu, Mang Feng, WanLi Yang +3 more

Kunling Wang, Tao Liu, Mang Feng +2 more

Zitterbewegung (ZB), the trembling of free relativistic electrons in a vacuum, could be simulated by a single trapped ion. We focus on the variations of ZB under different parity conditions and find no ZB in the case of odd or even parity. ZB occurs only for the admixture of the odd- and even-parity states. We also show that a similar role is played by the parity operator for the trapped ion in Fock-state representation and the space-inversion operator for a realistic relativistic electron. Although the ZB effect is invisible in a relativistic electron, preparation of the trapped ion in different parity states is a sophisticated job, which makes it possible to observe the parity-relevant ZB effects with currently available techniques.

M. Bagheri Harouni, Mahdi Davoudi Darareh

P. E. Toschek, Sascha Wallentowitz

Liu Ta

The motional trembling(‘zitterbewegung’)of a relativistic electron governed by Dirac equation was originally predicted by Schr¨odinger in the early days of quantum mechanics and simulated in a recent experiment with a single trapped ultracold ion.We investigate stable and instable confinements of a single trapped ion in a Paul trap under different conditions relevant to parity.Since our treatment involves neither restriction of Lamb-Dicke limit nor rotating-wave approximation,we may demonstrate different quantum dynamics of the single trapped ion in a wide range of the trapping parameters.We discuss the origin of the zitterbewegung which is relevant to the stability of the ion trapping.

Rowan Brad Quni-Gudzinas

Assessment of whether the vortex-enhanced Zitterbewegung mechanism proposed by Guo, Xu & Gu (2025, arXiv:2511.21142) can amplify the sub-Compton-scale ZBW signal to experimentally detectable levels in trapped-ion Dirac simulators. Integrates the Predin (2026) areal-rate observable and the p-adic readout framework of the Adelic Physics Program (Quni 2026, P1/P3/P7).