Dynamics of Entanglement in a Trapped Ion Quantum Magnet

University Of Colorado At Boulder, Boulder CO

Investigators

Abstract

One of the most important goals of modern quantum sciences is to learn how to control and entangle many-body systems and use them to make powerful and improved quantum devices, quantum materials and quantum technologies. The overall goal of this project is to develop protocols that will quantify the build-up of quantum correlations and the storage of quantum information in a crystal of trapped ions. The research effort can be placed in the context of quantum simulation: First, theory will guide experiments in regimes where theoretical predictions can be made and used to benchmark experiments. Next, experiments will be done in regimes where the dynamics are inaccessible to current theoretical methods. Finally, these experiments will push the theory and enable the development of new numerical methods capable of reproducing the observed dynamic. These investigations will be foundational to a new generation of synthetic quantum materials, not necessarily limited to trapped ions, with applications ranging from precision sensing and navigation to quantum communication and quantum information science. Moreover, the investigations will train and provide research experience to a graduate student and a postdoc. They will work with the NIST/Boulder experimental ion trap group and the theory groups at JILA and the University of Colorado at Boulder, and thus will be exposed to a highly collaborative atmosphere that will promote advances in quantum information science. The intellectual merit of the work is to develop new methods capable of describing the dynamics of quantum correlations and entanglement in trapped ion crystals. These numerical and analytic methods will be used to benchmark and guide the NIST-Boulder experiments where hundreds of cold beryllium ions are confined by a Penning trap in a two-dimensional triangular lattice geometry. In these experiments the spin degree of freedom is encoded in two hyper-fine states of the ions and the collective vibrational modes of the crystal, excited by laser beams, used to generate highly tunable long-range spin-spin interactions. By combining improved numerical techniques with better experimental protocols this team will push trapped ion experiments into a regime where they are able to create highly correlated quantum states and profit from the quantum advantage of these states for enhanced sensing and quantum information processing. These are challenging goals, but the synergy of interests and abilities of the investigators, with expertise spanning quantum optics, condensed matter physics, and theoretical and experimental atomic physics, will allow this group to delve into a broad range of problems motivated by the promise of new quantum technologies. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.