Search

We propose a spin-motion state for high-precision quantum metrology with super-Heisenberg scaling of the parameter estimation uncertainty using a trapped ion system. Such a highly entangled state can be created using the Tavis-Cummings Hamiltonian which describes the interaction between a collective spin system and a single vibrational mode. Our method relies on an adiabatic evolution in which the initial motional squeezing is adiabatically transferred into collective spin squeezing. In the weak squeezing regime, we show that the adiabatic evolution creates a spin-squeezed state, which reduces the quantum projective noise to a sub-shot noise limit. For strong bosonic squeezing we find that the quantum Fisher information follows a super-Heisenberg scaling law $\propto N^{5/2}$ in terms of the number of ions $N$. Furthermore, we discuss the spin squeezing parameter which quantifies the phase sensitivity enhancement in Ramsey spectroscopic measurements and show that it also exhibits a super-Heisenberg scaling with $N$. Our work enables the development of high-precision quantum metrology based on entangled spin-boson states that lead to faster scaling of the parameter estimation uncertainty with the number of spins., Comment: 7 pages, 6 figures

We prove several new results on the Hamming weight of bounded uniform and small-bias distributions. We exhibit bounded-uniform distributions whose weight is anti-concentrated, matching existing concentration inequalities. This construction relies on a recent result in approximation theory due to Erd\'eyi (Acta Arithmetica 2016). In particular, we match the classical tail bounds, generalizing a result by Bun and Steinke (RANDOM 2015). Also, we improve on a construction by Benjamini, Gurel-Gurevich, and Peled (2012). We give a generic transformation that converts any bounded uniform distribution to a small-bias distribution that almost preserves its weight distribution. Applying this transformation in conjunction with the above results and others, we construct small-bias distributions with various weight restrictions. In particular, we match the concentration that follows from that of bounded uniformity and the generic closeness of small-bias and bounded-uniform distributions, answering a question by Bun and Steinke (RANDOM 2015). Moreover, these distributions are supported on only a constant number of Hamming weights. We further extend the anti-concentration constructions to small-bias distributions perturbed with noise, a class that has received much attention recently in derandomization. Our results imply (but are not implied by) a recent result of the authors (CCC 2024), and are based on different techniques. In particular, we prove that the standard Gaussian distribution is far from any mixture of Gaussians with bounded variance.

An $n$-bit boolean function is resilient to coalitions of size $q$ if any fixed set of $q$ bits is unlikely to influence the function when the other $n-q$ bits are chosen uniformly. We give explicit constructions of depth-$3$ circuits that are resilient to coalitions of size $cn/\log^{2}n$ with bias $n^{-c}$. Previous explicit constructions with the same resilience had constant bias. Our construction is simpler and we generalize it to biased product distributions. Our proof builds on previous work; the main differences are the use of a tail bound for expander walks in combination with a refined analysis based on Janson's inequality.

We investigate the onset of quantum thermalization in a system governed by the Jahn-Teller Hamiltonian which describes the interaction between a single spin and two bosonic modes. We find that the Jahn-Teller model exhibits a finite-size quantum phase transition between the normal phase and two types of super-radiant phase when the ratios of spin-level splitting to each of the two bosonic frequencies grow to infinity. We test the prediction of the Eigenstate Thermalization Hypothesis in the Jahn-Teller model. We show that the expectation value of the spin observable quickly approaches its long-time average value. We find that the distance between the diagonal ensemble average and the microcanonical ensemble average of the spin observable decreases with the effective thermodynamic parameter. Furthermore, we show that the mean-time fluctuations of the spin observable are small and are inversely proportional to the effective system dimension., Comment: 8 pages, 5 figures

We theoretically investigate parameter quantum estimation in quantum chaotic systems. Our analysis is based on an effective description of non-integrable quantum systems in terms of a random matrix Hamiltonian. Based on this approach we derive an analytical expression for the time evolution of the quantum Fisher information. We test our random matrix theory prediction with the exact diagonalization of a non-integrable spin system, focusing on the estimation of a local magnetic field by measurements of the many-body state. Our numerical calculations agree with the effective random matrix theory approach and show that the information on the local Hamiltonian parameter is distributed throughout the quantum system during the quantum thermalization process. Our analysis shows a first stage in which the initial information spread is quadratic in time which quickly passes into linear increase with slope determine by the decay rate of the measured spin observable. When the information is fully spread among all degrees of freedom a second quadratic time scale determines the long time behaviour of the quantum Fisher information., Comment: 10 pages, 6 figures

We study the fundamental challenge of exhibiting explicit functions that have small correlation with low-degree polynomials over $\mathbb{F}_{2}$. Our main contributions include: 1. In STOC 2020, CHHLZ introduced a new technique to prove correlation bounds. Using their technique they established new correlation bounds for low-degree polynomials. They conjectured that their technique generalizes to higher degree polynomials as well. We give a counterexample to their conjecture, in fact ruling out weaker parameters and showing what they prove is essentially the best possible. 2. We propose a new approach for proving correlation bounds with the central "mod functions", consisting of two steps: (I) the polynomials that maximize correlation are symmetric and (II) symmetric polynomials have small correlation. Contrary to related results in the literature, we conjecture that (I) is true. We argue this approach is not affected by existing "barrier results". 3. We prove our conjecture for quadratic polynomials. Specifically, we determine the maximum possible correlation between quadratic polynomials modulo 2 and the functions $(x_{1},\dots,x_{n})\to z^{\sum x_{i}}$ for any $z$ on the complex unit circle; and show that it is achieved by symmetric polynomials. To obtain our results we develop a new proof technique: we express correlation in terms of directional derivatives and analyze it by slowly restricting the direction. 4. We make partial progress on the conjecture for cubic polynomials, in particular proving tight correlation bounds for cubic polynomials whose degree-3 part is symmetric.

We propose a laser-free method for creation of a phonon two-mode squeezed state and a beam-splitter transformation, using time-varying electric fields and non-linear couplings between the normal modes in a linear ion crystal. Such non-linear Coulomb-mediated interactions between the collective vibrational modes arise under specific trap-frequency conditions in an ion trap. We study the quantum metrological capability for parameter estimation of the two quantum states and show that a Heisenberg limit of precision can be achieved when the initial state with $n$ phonons evolves under the action of the beam-splitter transformation. Furthermore, we show that the phonon non-linearity and the spin-dependent force can be used for creation of a three-qubit Fredkin gate., Comment: 7 pages, 6 figures

We propose a critical dissipaive quantum metrology schemes for single parameter estimation which are based on a quantum probe consisting of coherently driven ensemble of $N$ spin-1/2 particles under the effect of squeezed, collective spin decay. The collective spin system exhibits a dissipative phase transition between thermal and ferromagnetic phases, which is characterized with nonanalytical behavior of the spin observables. We show that thanks to the dissipative phase transition the sensitivity of the parameter estimation can be significantly enhanced. Furthermore, we show that our steady state is an entangled spin squeezed state which allow to perform parameter estimation with sub shot-noise limited measurement uncertainty., Comment: 7 pages, 5 figures

We discuss the onset of quantum chaos and thermalization in the two-mode Dicke model, which describes the dipolar interaction between an ensemble of spins and two bosonic modes. The two-mode Dicke model exhibits normal to superradiant quantum phase transition with spontaneous breaking either of a discrete or continuous symmetry. We study the behaviour of the fidelity out-of-time-order correlator derived from the Loschmidt echo signal in the quantum phases of the model and show that its exponential growth cannot be related to a classical unstable point in the general case. Moreover, we find that the collective spin observable in the two-mode Dicke model quickly saturates to its long-time average value, and shows very good agreement between its diagonal ensemble average and microcanonical average even for a small number of spins. We show that the temporal fluctuations of the expectation value of the collective spin observable around its average are small and decrease with the effective system size, which leads to thermalization of the spin system., Comment: 8 pages, 6 figures, (v2) updated appendix

We investigate signatures of chaos and equilibration in the quantum Rabi model, which exhibits a quantum phase transition when the ratio of the atomic level-splitting to bosonic frequency grows to infinity. We show that out-of-time-order correlator derived from the Loschmidt echo signal quickly saturates in the normal phase and reveals exponential growth in the superradiant phase which is associated with the onset of quantum chaos. Furthermore, we show that the effective time-averaged dimension of the quantum Rabi system can be large compared to the spin system size which leads to suppression of the temporal fluctuations and equilibration of the spin system., Comment: 10 pages, 10 figures

I propose an efficient method for measuring non-linear coupling between the collective axial breathing mode and the radial rocking mode induced by the mutual Coulomb repulsion in linear ion crystal. The quantum sensing technique is based on the laser induced coupling between one of the vibrational modes and the internal ion's spin states which allows to estimate the non-linear coupling either by measuring the phonon probability distribution or directly be observing the Ramsey-type oscillations of the ion spin states. I show that due to the presence of non-linear phonon coupling the off-resonance interaction between the ion spin states and the axial breathing mode leads to spin-dependent phonon squeezing of the radial rocking mode. Thus the non-linear coupling can be estimated by measuring population distribution of the motional squeezed state. Furthermore, I show that the off-resonance interaction between the spin and the radial rocking mode creates a spin-dependent beam splitter operation between the two vibrational modes. Thus, the parameter estimation can be carried out by detecting the ion spin populations. Finally, I show that the measurement uncertainty precision can reach the Heisenberg limit by using an entangled states between the two collective modes., Comment: 7 pages, 4 figures

We analyze the Fourier growth, i.e. the $L_1$ Fourier weight at level $k$ (denoted $L_{1,k}$), of various well-studied classes of "structured" $\mathbb{F}_2$-polynomials. This study is motivated by applications in pseudorandomness, in particular recent results and conjectures due to [CHHL19,CHLT19,CGLSS20] which show that upper bounds on Fourier growth (even at level $k=2$) give unconditional pseudorandom generators. Our main structural results on Fourier growth are as follows: - We show that any symmetric degree-$d$ $\mathbb{F}_2$-polynomial $p$ has $L_{1,k}(p) \le \Pr[p=1] \cdot O(d)^k$, and this is tight for any constant $k$. This quadratically strengthens an earlier bound that was implicit in [RSV13]. - We show that any read-$\Delta$ degree-$d$ $\mathbb{F}_2$-polynomial $p$ has $L_{1,k}(p) \le \Pr[p=1] \cdot (k \Delta d)^{O(k)}$. - We establish a composition theorem which gives $L_{1,k}$ bounds on disjoint compositions of functions that are closed under restrictions and admit $L_{1,k}$ bounds. Finally, we apply the above structural results to obtain new unconditional pseudorandom generators and new correlation bounds for various classes of $\mathbb{F}_2$-polynomials., Comment: Corrected a mistake in Lemma 27 in the previous version of the paper

We propose a quantum metrology protocol for measuring frequencies and weak forces based on a periodic modulating quantum Jahn-Teller system composed of a single spin interacting with two bosonic modes. We show that in the first order of the frequency drive the time-independent effective Hamiltonian describes spin-dependent interaction between the two bosonic modes. In the limit of high-frequency drive and low bosonic frequency the quantum Jahn-Teller system exhibits critical behaviour which can be used for high-precision quantum estimation. A major advantage of our scheme is the robustness of the system against spin decoherence which allows to perform parameter estimations with measurement time not limited by spin dephasing., Comment: 8 pages, 4 figures

We propose an adiabatic method for optimal phonon temperature estimation using trapped ions which can be operated beyond the Lamb-Dicke regime. The quantum sensing technique relies on a time-dependent red-sideband transition of phonon modes, described by the non-linear Jaynes-Cummings model in general. A unique feature of our sensing technique is that the relevant information of the phonon thermal distributions can be transferred to the collective spin-degree of freedom. We show that each of the thermal state probabilities is adiabatically mapped onto the respective collective spin-excitation configuration and thus the temperature estimation is carried out simply by performing a spin-dependent laser fluorescence measurement at the end of the adiabatic transition. We characterize the temperature uncertainty in terms of the Fisher information and show that the state projection measurement saturates the fundamental quantum Cram\'er-Rao bound for quantum oscillator at thermal equilibrium., Comment: 8 pages, 7 figures

I propose a quantum sensor based on driven-dissipative quantum system for the joint estimation of two conjugated variables characterizing the phase space displacement. The quantum probe consists of lattice system with two level atoms and bosonic modes which interact via dipolar coupling. Interplay between the coherent dynamics and dissipative processes of losses of bosonic excitations leads to a steady state which exhibits a non-analytical behaviour. I show that close to the dissipative phase transition the sensitivity of one of the conjugated parameters either the magnitude of the phase of the displacement can be significantly enhanced. Moreover, I show that the sum of the measurement uncertainties of the two parameters can overcome the standard quantum limit., Comment: 8 pages, 4 figures

We propose a method for the realization of the two-qubit quantum Fourier transform (QFT) using a Hamiltonian which possesses the circulant symmetry. Importantly, the eigenvectors of the circulant matrices are the Fourier modes and do not depend on the magnitude of the Hamiltonian elements as long as the circulant symmetry is preserved. The QFT implementation relies on the adiabatic transition from each of the spin product states to the respective quantum Fourier superposition states. We show that in ion traps one can obtain a Hamiltonian with the circulant symmetry by tuning the spin-spin interaction between the trapped ions. We present numerical results which demonstrate that very high fidelity can be obtained with realistic experimental resources. We also describe how the gate can be accelerated by using a "shortcut-to-adiabaticity" field., Comment: 8 pages, 6 figures

We propose a scheme for detecting time-varying weak forces using quantum probe consisting of single spin and quantum oscillator under the effect of collective dissipation. We study the force estimation in the steady-state regime where the information of the force is extracted by measuring observable of the oscillator such as quadrature and mean phonon excitation. We quantify the force sensitivity in terms of quantum Fisher information and show that it diverges approaching the critical spin-boson coupling making the system sensitive to very small force perturbation. We show that close to the critical coupling the measurement of the oscillator quadrature is optimal in a sense that saturates the fundamental Cramer-Rao bound. Furthermore, we study the force estimation in the presence of phonon squeezing and show that it can significantly improve the sensitivity reaching minimal detectable force of order of xN (1${\rm xN=10^{-27}{\rm N}}$)., Comment: 7 pages, 5 figures

The quadrupole interaction between the Rydberg electronic states of a Rydberg ion and the radio frequency electric field of the ion trap is analyzed. Such a coupling is negligible for the lowest energy levels of a trapped ion but it is important for a trapped Rydberg ion due to its large electric dipole moment. This coupling cannot be neglected by the standard rotating-wave approximation because it is comparable to the frequency of the trapping electric field. We investigate the effect of the quadrupole coupling by performing a suitable effective representation of the Hamiltonian. For a single ion we show that in this effective picture the quadrupole interaction is replaced by rescaled laser intensities and additional Stark shifts of the Rydberg levels. Hence this detrimental quadrupole coupling can be efficiently compensated by an appropriate increase of the Rabi frequencies. Moreover, we consider the strong dipole-dipole interaction between a pair of Rydberg ions in the presence of the quadrupole coupling. In the effective representation we observe reducing of the dipole-dipole coupling as well as additional spin-spin interaction., Comment: 6 pages, 6 figures

We introduce the estimation protocol for detecting the temperature of the transverse vibrational modes of linear ion crystal. We show that thanks to the laser induced laser coupling between the vibrational modes and the collective spin states the estimation of the temperature is carried out by set of measurements of the spin populations. We show that temperature estimation protocol using single ion as a quantum probe is optimal in a sense that the set of state projective measurement saturates the fundamental Cramer-Rao bound. We find a plateau of the maximal temperature sensitivity using ion chain as a quantum probe. Moreover, we show that the non-classical part of the quantum Fisher information could leads to enhancement of the temperature sensitivity compared to the single ion case., Comment: 9 pages, 7 figures

Recently, the creation of photonic Landau levels in a twisted cavity has been demonstrated in Nature \textbf{534}, 671 (2016). Here we propose a scheme to adiabatically transfer flux quanta in multiples of $3\hbar$ simultaneously to all cavity photons by coupling the photons through flux-threaded cones present in such cavity setup. The flux transfer is achieved using external light fields with orbital angular momentum and a near-resonant dense atomic medium as mediator. Furthermore, coupling the cavity fields to a Rydberg state in a configuration supporting electromagnetically induced transparency, fractional quantum Hall states can be prepared. To this end a growing protocol is used consisting of a sequence of flux insertion and subsequent single-photon insertion steps. We discuss specifically the growing of the $\nu=1/2$ bosonic Laughlin state, where we first repeat the flux insertion twice creating a double quasi-hole excitation. Then, the hole is refilled using a coherent pump and the Rydberg blockade., Comment: 12 pages, 6 figures

We introduce a quantum sensing protocol for detecting the parameters characterizing the phase space displacement by using a single trapped ion as a quantum probe. We show that thanks to the laser-induced coupling between the ion's internal states and the motion mode the estimation of the two conjugated parameters describing the displacement can be efficiently performed by a set of measurements of the atomic state populations. Furthermore, we introduce a three-parameter protocol capable to detect the magnitude, the transverse direction and the phase of the displacement. We characterize the uncertainty of the two- and three-parameter problems in terms of the Fisher information and show that state projective measurement saturates the fundamental quantum Cramer-Rao bound., Comment: 6 pages, 5 figures

We introduce quantum sensing protocol for detection spatially varying fields by using two coupled harmonic oscillators as a quantum probe. We discuss a physical implementation of the sensing technique with two trapped ions coupled via Coulomb mediated phonon hopping. Our method relies on using the coupling between the localized ion oscillations and the internal states of the trapped ions which allows to measure spatially varying electric and magnetic fields. First we discuss an adiabatic sensing technique which is capable to detect a very small force difference simply by measuring the ion spin population. We also show that the adiabatic method can be used for detection magnetic field gradient which is independent of the magnetic offset. Second, we show that the strong spin phonon coupling could leads to improve sensitivity to force as well as to phase estimations. We quantify the sensitivity in terms of quantum Fisher information and show that it diverges by approaching the critical coupling., Comment: 11 pages, 6 figures

We propose force sensing protocols using linear ion chain which can operate beyond the quantum standard limit. We show that oscillating forces that are off-resonance with the motional trap frequency can be detected very efficiently by using quantum probes represented by various spin-boson models. We demonstrate that the temporal evolution of a quantum probe described by the Dicke model can be mapped on the nonlinear Ramsey interferometry which allows to detect far-detuned forces simply by measuring the collective spin populations. Moreover, we show that the measurement uncertainty can reach the Heisenberg limit by using initial spin correlated states, instead of motional entangled states. An important advantage of the sensing technique is its natural robustness against the thermally induced dephasing, which extends the coherence time of the measurement protocol. Furthermore, we introduce sensing scheme that utilize the strong spin-phonon coupling to improve the force estimation. We show that for quantum probe represented by quantum Rabi model the force sensitivity can overcome those using simple harmonic oscillator as a force sensor., Comment: 7 pages, 5 figures

We introduce quantum sensing schemes for measuring very weak forces with a single trapped ion. They use the spin-motional coupling induced by the laser-ion interaction to transfer the relevant force information to the spin-degree of freedom. Therefore, the force estimation is carried out simply by observing the Ramsey-type oscillations of the ion spin states. Three quantum probes are considered, which are represented by systems obeying the Jaynes-Cummings, quantum Rabi (in 1D) and Jahn-Teller (in 2D) models. By using dynamical decoupling schemes in the Jaynes-Cummings and Jahn-Teller models, our force sensing protocols can be made robust to the spin dephasing caused by the thermal and magnetic field fluctuations. In the quantum-Rabi probe, the residual spin-phonon coupling vanishes, which makes this sensing protocol naturally robust to thermally-induced spin dephasing. We show that the proposed techniques can be used to sense the axial and transverse components of the force with a sensitivity beyond the yN $/\sqrt{\text{Hz}}$ range, i.e. in the xN$ /\sqrt{\text{Hz}}$ (xennonewton, $10^{-27}$). The Jahn-Teller protocol, in particular, can be used to implement a two-channel vector spectrum analyzer for measuring ultra-low voltages., Comment: 7 pages, 4 figures

We propose a quantum sensing scheme for measuring weak forces based on a symmetry-breaking adiabatic transition in the quantum Rabi model. We show that the system described by the Rabi Hamiltonian can serve as a sensor for extremely weak forces with sensitivity beyond the yN $/\sqrt{\text{Hz}}$ range. We propose an implementation of this sensing protocol using a single trapped ion. A major advantage of our scheme is that the force detection is performed by projective measurement of the population of the spin states at the end of the transition, instead of the far slower phonon number measurement used hitherto., Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures

We present improved circuits for the control-control-phase (Toffoli) gate and the control-swap (Fredkin) gate using three and four global two-qubit gates, respectively. This is a nearly double speed-up compared to the conventional circuits, which require five (for Toffoli) and seven (for Fredkin) conditional two-qubit gates. We apply the same approach to construct the conditional four-qubit phase gate by seven global two-qubit gates. We also present construction of the Toffoli and the Fredkin gates with five nearest-neighbour interactions. Our constructions do not employ ancilla qubits or ancilla internal states and are particularly well suited for ion qubits and for circuit QED systems, where the entangling operations can be implemented by global addressing.

We discuss analytical approximations to the ground-state phase diagram and the elementary excitations of the cooperative Jahn-Teller model describing strongly correlated spin-boson system on a lattice in various quantum optical systems. Based on the mean-field theory approach we show that the system exhibits quantum magnetic structural phase transition which leads to magnetic ordering of the spins and formation of the bosonic condensates. We determine existing of one gapless Goldstone mode and two gapped amplitude modes inside the symmetry-broken phase., Comment: 7 pages, 1 figure

We present a system for the simulation of Heisenberg models with spins $s=\frac{1}{2}$ and $s=1$ with a linear crystal of trapped ions. We show that the laser-ion interaction induces a Jaynes-Cummings-Hubbard interaction between the atomic V-type level structure and the two phonon species. In the strong-coupling regime the collective atom and phonon excitations become localized at each lattice site and form an effective spin system with varying length. We show that the quantum-mechanical superexchange interaction caused by the second-order phonon hopping processes creates a Heisenberg-type coupling between the individual spins. Trapped ions allow to control the superexchange interactions by adjusting the trapping frequencies, the laser intensity, and the detuning., Comment: 9 pages, 6 figures

The electric dipole moments of various neutral elementary particles, such as neutron, neutrinos, certain hypothetical dark matter particles and others, are predicted to exist by the standard model of high energy physics and various extensions of it. However, the predicted values are beyond the present experimental capabilities. We propose to simulate and emulate the electric dipole moment of neutral relativistic particles and the ensuing effects in the presence of electrostatic field by emulation of an extended Dirac equation in ion traps.

We study theoretically the collective E$\otimes$e Jahn-Teller-Dicke distortion in a system of trapped ions. We focus in the limit of infinite range interactions in which an ensemble of effective spins interacts with two collective vibrational modes with U(1) symmetric couplings. Our model is exactly solvable in the thermodynamical limit and it is amenable to be solved by exact numerical diagonalization for a moderate number of ions. We show that trapped ions are ideally suited to study the emergence of spontaneous symmetry breaking of a continuous symmetry and magnetic structural phase transition in a mesoscopic system., Comment: 19 pages, 7 figures

The Jahn-Teller effect explains distortions and non-degenerate energy levels in molecular and solid-state physics via a coupling of effective spins to collective bosons. Here we propose and theoretically analyze the quantum simulation of a many-body Jahn-Teller model with linear ion crystals subjected to magnetic field gradients. We show that the system undergoes a quantum magnetic structural phase transition which leads to a reordering of particle positions and the formation of a spin-phonon quasi-condensate in mesoscopic ion chains., Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures

We propose the realization of linear crystals of cold ions which contain different atomic species for investigating quantum phase transitions and frustration effects in spin system beyond the commonly discussed case of $s=1/2$. Mutual spin-spin interactions between ions can be tailored via the Zeeman effect by applying oscillating magnetic fields with strong gradients. Further, collective vibrational modes in the mixed ion crystal can be used to enhance and to vary the strength of spin-spin interactions and even to switch those forces from a ferro- to an antiferromagnetic character. We consider the behavior of the effective spin-spin couplings in an ion crystal of spin-1/2 ions doped with high magnetic moment ions with spin S=3. We analyze the ground state phase diagram and find regions with different spin orders including ferrimagnetic states. In the most simple non-trivial example we deal with a linear $\{$Ca$^+$, Mn$^+$, Ca$^+\}$ crystal with spins of $\{1/2,3,1/2}$. To show the feasibility with current state-of-the-art experiments, we discuss how quantum phases might be detected using a collective Stern-Gerlach effect of the ion crystal and high resolution spectroscopy. Here, the state-dependent laser-induced fluorescence of the indicator spin-1/2 ion, of species $^{40}$Ca$^+$, reveals also the spin state of the simulator spin-3 ions, $^{50}$Mn$^+$ as this does not possess suitable levels for optical excitation and detection., Comment: 15 pages, 5 figures

We explore the behavior of the phonon number distribution in an heterogeneous linear ion crystal. The presence of ion species with different masses changes dramatically the transverse energy spectrum, in such a way that two eigenfrequencies become non-analytic functions of the mass ratio in the form of a sharp cusp. This non-analyticity induces a quantum phase transition between condensed and conducting phase of the transverse local phonons. In order to continuously vary the mass ratio we adiabatically modify a locally applied laser field, exerting optical dipole forces which reduces the effective mass., Comment: 5 pages, 5 figures

Trapped, laser-cooled atoms and ions are quantum systems which can be experimentally controlled with an as yet unmatched degree of precision. Due to the control of the motion and the internal degrees of freedom, these quantum systems can be adequately described by a well known Hamiltonian. In this colloquium, we present powerful numerical tools for the optimization of the external control of the motional and internal states of trapped neutral atoms, explicitly applied to the case of trapped laser-cooled ions in a segmented ion-trap. We then delve into solving inverse problems, when optimizing trapping potentials for ions. Our presentation is complemented by a quantum mechanical treatment of the wavepacket dynamics of a trapped ion. Efficient numerical solvers for both time-independent and time-dependent problems are provided. Shaping the motional wavefunctions and optimizing a quantum gate is realized by the application of quantum optimal control techniques. The numerical methods presented can also be used to gain an intuitive understanding of quantum experiments with trapped ions by performing virtual simulated experiments on a personal computer. Code and executables are supplied as supplementary online material (http://kilian-singer.de/ent)., Comment: accepted for publication in Review of Modern Physics 2010

We propose an ion trap implementation of Grover's quantum search algorithm for an unstructured database of arbitrary length N. The experimental implementation is appealingly simple because the linear ion trap allows for a straightforward construction, in a single interaction step and without a multitude of Hadamard transforms, of the reflection operator, which is the engine of the Grover algorithm. Consequently, a dramatic reduction in the number of the required physical steps takes place, to just O(\sqrt{N}), the same as the number of the mathematical steps. The proposed setup allows for demonstration of both the original (probabilistic) Grover search and its deterministic variation, and is remarkably robust to imperfections in the register initialization.

We propose a geometric phase gate in a decoherence-free subspace with trapped ions. The quantum information is encoded in the Zeeman sublevels of the ground-state and two physical qubits to make up one logical qubit with ultra long coherence time. Single- and two-qubit operations together with the transport and splitting of linear ion crystals allow for a robust and decoherence-free scalable quantum processor. For the ease of the phase gate realization we employ one Raman laser field on four ions simultaneously, i.e. no tight focus for addressing. The decoherence-free subspace is left neither during gate operations nor during the transport of quantum information., Comment: 6 pages, 6 figures

We discuss analytic approximations to the ground state phase diagram of the homogeneous Jaynes-Cummings-Hubbard (JCH) Hamiltonian with general short-range hopping. The JCH model describes e.g. radial phonon excitations of a linear chain of ions coupled to an external laser field tuned to the red motional sideband with Coulomb mediated hopping or an array of high-$Q$ coupled cavities containing a two-level atom and photons. Specifically we consider the cases of a linear array of coupled cavities and a linear ion chain. We derive approximate analytic expressions for the boundaries between Mott-insulating and superfluid phases and give explicit expressions for the critical value of the hopping amplitude within the different approximation schemes. In the case of an array of cavities, which is represented by the standard JCH model we compare both approximations to numerical data from density-matrix renormalization group (DMRG) calculations., Comment: 9 pages, 5 figures, extended and corrected second version

Plasmon spectrum and polarization operator of 1, 2, and 3 dimensional electron gas are calculated by T=0 Green function technique. It is shown that this field theory method gives probably the simplest pedagogical derivation of the statistical problem for the response function. The explanation is complimentary to the standard courses on condensed matter and plasma physics of the level of IX volume of Landau-Lifshitz encyclopedia on theoretical physics., Comment: methodical paper, 10 pages, Revtex4, no figures, 1 dimensional case added, typos corrected

A methodical derivation of RKKY interaction in framework of T=0 Green function method is given in great detail. The article is complimentary to standard textbooks on the physics of magnetism and condensed matter physics. It is shown that the methods of statistical mechanics gives a standard and probably simplest derivation of the exchange interaction. A parallel with theory of plasma waves demonstrates the relation between the Fourier transformation of polarization operator of degenerate electron gas at zero frequency and the space dependence of the indirect electron exchange due to itinerant electrons., Comment: 5 pages, no figures, methodical paper