Ions and Light

Anders Søndberg Sørensen, Klaus Mølmer

In the ion trap quantum computer, quantum bits are represented by the internal state of the trapped ions, and the collective vibrations of the ions are exploited for the coherent manipulation of the state of several bits. We have developed a method to perform gates on different ions by illuminating the ions with bichromatic light. Our gates are independent of the motional state of the ions and they may be applied to ions in any state or, e.g., thermal mixture of vibrational states. Moreover, our proposal allows the production of multiparticle entangled states even in situations without experimental access to the individual ions in the trap. Maximally entangled states of any number of ions are produced by simply illuminating all ions with the same beams of bichromatic light.

Andrew S. Milman

Bill Grubbs

Zhong-Jie Wang

Several schemes have been proposed to prepare two-mode squeezed state and entanglement state between motional states of a single trapped ion and light. Preparation of two-mode squeezed state is based on interaction of a trapped ion located in light cavity with cavity field. Preparation of entanglement state is based on interaction of a trapped ion located in light cavity with cavity field and a traveling wave light field.

Amit Goswami

Thuy Dung Tran, D. Babjak, Artem Kovalenko +6 more

Abstract The efficient detection of light from trapped ions in free space is paramount for most of their applications. We propose a scheme to enhance the photon collection from linear ion strings. It employs the constructive interference of light scattered from ions along the axial direction in linear Paul traps. The coherent enhancement of photon collection is numerically optimized for a range of feasible spatial angles and realistic ion positions in a single harmonic Coulomb potential. Despite the large mutual distance of scatterers on the order of many wavelengths of scattered light, the experimental tests presented confirm the feasibility of enhancements by a factor of 3.05 ± 0.09 with a crystal of nine 40 Ca + ions. The proposed collection geometry is intrinsic to diverse linear ion trap designs, and the methodology can be directly applied to an observation of scattering from ion crystals prepared in collective electronic excitations.