AMO Special Seminar

Dynamics of correlations and entanglement in trapped ion quantum simulators

When:

March 09, 2016

Time:

10:30 AM - 11:30 AM

Location:

PHYS 242

Speaker:

Michael Wall
JILA and Department of Physics, University of Colorado

Details:

Arrays of trapped ions have been an indispensable resource for many applications in quantum science due to long coherence times and high fidelity state preparation and readout.  In recent years, trapped ion experiments have ventured into quantum many-body physics in the form of quantum simulation of long-range spin models.  Here, effective interactions between the internal atomic states of the ions (``spins") are mediated via the quantized normal modes of a trapped ion crystal.  In this talk, I will first discuss our recent collaboration with the experimental group of John Bollinger at NIST, in which we verify entanglement in the form of spin squeezing in a quantum simulator consisting of hundreds of trapped ions.  Beyond spin squeezing, which characterizes low-order correlations of the system, we also compare the full probability distribution of collective spin measurements, containing all orders of correlations, to ab initio theory that accounts for the combined effects of interactions and decoherence and find good agreement.  In the latter part of the talk, I will discuss a novel method to numerically study the out-of-equilibrium dynamics of many spins coupled to many bosons using matrix product states, a class of lowly-entangled quantum states, which enables us to simulate ongoing trapped ion experiments in analytically intractable regimes.  I will also provide a broad perspective on how this method may be used for myriad applications in atomic, molecular, and optical physics, such as for atoms trapped in optical cavities.

Refreshments will be served.