Trapping Ions in an optical lattice for quantum simulation

Tongyan Lin, Kenneth R. Brown, Xie Chen +3 more

Sainath Motlakunta, Fereshteh Rajabi, Yi Hong Teoh +5 more

Daniel Hoenig, Fabian Thielemann, Leon Karpa +3 more

We report the optical trapping of multiple ions localized at individual lattice sites of a one-dimensional optical lattice. We observe a fivefold increased range of axial dc-electric field strength for which ions can be optically trapped with high probability and an increase of the axial eigenfrequency by 2 orders of magnitude compared to an optical dipole trap without interference but of similar intensity. Our findings motivate an alternative pathway to extend arrays of trapped ions in size and dimension, enabling quantum simulations with particles interacting at long range.

慎太郎 田家, 靖司 素川, 歴舟 山崎

Martin Enderlein, Thomas M. Huber, Christian Schneider +1 more

We report on three-dimensional optical trapping of single ions in a one-dimensional optical lattice formed by two counterpropagating laser beams. We characterize the trapping parameters of the standing-wave using the ion as a sensor stored in a hybrid trap consisting of a radio-frequency (rf), a dc, and the optical potential. When loading ions directly from the rf into the standing-wave trap, we observe a dominant heating rate. Monte Carlo simulations confirm rf-induced parametric excitations within the deep optical lattice as the main source. We demonstrate a way around this effect by an alternative transfer protocol which involves an intermediate step of optical confinement in a single-beam trap avoiding the temporal overlap of the standing-wave and the rf field. Implications arise for hybrid (rf-optical) and pure optical traps as platforms for ultracold chemistry experiments exploring atom-ion collisions or quantum simulation experiments with ions, or combinations of ions and atoms.

Juan José García‐Ripoll, P. Zoller, J. I. Cirac

This paper summarizes some important achievements of quantum information processing with trapped ions or neutral atoms. In particular, we describe the storage of information and realization of two-qubit gates with ions, as well as the creation of entanglement and quantum simulation with cold atoms in optical lattices.