Scheme to measure the expectation value of a physical quantity in weak coupling regime

In quantum mechanics, the expectation value of an operator can be measured by using the projective measurement, ifthe coupling between the measured system and pointer is strong enough. However in the weak coupling regime, the pointercan not show all the eigenvalue of the physical quantity directly due to the overlapping among the pointer states, whichmakes the measurement of the expectation value difficult. In this paper, we propose an expectation value measurementmethod in the weak coupling regime inspired by the weak measurement scheme. Compared to the projective measurement,our scheme has two obvious advantages. Experimentally we use the internal state and motional state of a single trapped40Ca+ to establish the measurement scheme and realize the proof of principle demonstration of the scheme.     

A New Approach to Measurement of Heating Rate of Trapped Ions

We propose a new scheme to estimate the heating rate of trapped ions in thermal states. By applying a controlled-U gate between the internal and the motional states of one of the trapped ions, we could obtain the mean phonon number from the population of the internal state of the ion. The imperfection due to fluctuations of the relevant parameters in real experiments is considered and we anaiyze the experimental feasibility of our scheme with sophisticated ion trap techniques.     

Irreversibility of a quantum walk induced by controllable decoherence employing random unitary operations

Quantum walk is different from random walk in reversibility and interference. Observation of the reduced re- versibility in a realistic quantum walk is of scientific interest in understanding the unique quantum behavior. We propose an idea to experimentally investigate the decoherence-induced irreversibility of quantum walks with trapped ions in phase space via the average fidelity decay. By introducing two controllable decoherence sources, i.e., the phase damping channel (i.e., dephasing) and the high temperature amplitude reservoir (i.e., dissipation), in the intervals between the steps of quantum walk, we find that the high temperature amplitude reservoir shows more detrimental effects than the phase damping channel on quantum walks. Our study also shows that the average fidelity decay works better than the position variance for characterizing the transition from quantum walks to random walk. Experimental feasibility to monitor the irreversibility is justified using currently available techniques.     

Linear ion trap imperfection and the compensation of excess micromotion

Quantum computing requires ultracold ions in a ground vibrational state,which is achieved by sideband cooling.We report our recent efforts towards the Lamb-Dicke regime which is a prerequisite of sideband cooling.We first analyse the possible imperfection in our linear ion trap setup and then demonstrate how to suppress the imperfection by compensating the excess micromotion of the ions.The ions,after the micromotion compensation,are estimated to be very close to the Doppler-cooling limit.     

Control of a Cloud of Laser-Cooled 40Ca+ in a Linear Ion Trap

A cloud of laser-cooled ^40Ca^＋ is successfully trapped and manipulated under well control in our home-built linear ion trap, which is designed and constructed solely for studying quantum information processing. By exploring the variation of the ion cloud with respect to the trap parameters, we have optimized the trapping condition and obtained very good fluorescence spectra. We observe the dynamics of the ion cloud, and estimate the temperature of the ion cloud to be of the order of milli-Kelvin.     

Strings of Ion Crystals in a Linear Trap for Quantum Information Processing

Strings of laser cooled ^40 Ca＋ crystals have been successfully confined in our home-built linear ion trap, and ready for quantum information processing. We find the cloud-crystal phase transition of the trapped ions to be strongly sensitive to the frequencies of the Doppler cooling lasers and to the trapping voltage. The quantum jump of a single ion has been observed by controlling the quadrupole transition of the ion by a weak laser with ultra-narrow bandwidth.     

Measurement of the secular motion frequency and the space charge density in the linear ion trap

This paper reports that a cloud of laser-cooled 40 Ca + is successfully trapped and manipulated in the home-built linear ion trap constructed for quantum information processing (QIP).The frequency of the secular motion and the space charge density of the ion cloud are measured,which help knowing the characteristic of the trapping potential and are the prerequisite of QIP with the trapped ions.     

Demonstration of quantum anti-Zeno effect with a single trapped ion

We experimentally demonstrate the quantum anti-Zeno effect in a two-level system based on a single trapped ion ~(40)Ca~+. In the large detuning regime, we show that the transfer from the ground state to the excited state can be remarkably enhanced by the inserted projection measurements. The inserted measurements in our experiment are realized by the electron shelving technique. Compared to the ideal projection measurement, which makes the quantum state collapse instantaneously, a practical electron shelving process needs a finite time duration. The minimum time for this collapse process is shown to be inversely proportional to the square of the coupling strength between the measurement laser and the system.     

Determining spatial structures of ion crystals by simulated annealing method

Calculating the spatial structures of ion crystals is important in ion-trapped quantum computation. Here we demonstrate that the simulated annealing method is a powerful tool to evaluate the structures of ion crystals. By calculating equilibrium positions of 10 ions under harmonic potential and those of 120 ions under anharmonic potential, both with the standard procedure and simulated annealing method, we find that the standard procedure to evaluate spatial structures is complicated and may be inefficient in some cases, and that the simulated annealing method is more favorable.     

Extension of Linear Response Regime in Weak-Value Amplification Technique

The achievable precision of parameter estimation plays a significant role in evaluating a strategy of metrology.In practice,one may employ approximations in a theoretical model development for simplicity,which,however,will cause systematic error and lead to a loss of precision.We derive the error of maximum likelihood estimation in the weak-value amplification technique where the linear approximation of the coupling parameter is used.We show that this error is positively related to the coupling ...