C. D'Helon

We present a scheme in which an ion trap quantum computer can be used to make arbitrarily accurate measurements of the quadrature phase variables for the collective vibrational motion of the ion. The electronic states of the ion become the `apparatus', and the method is based on regarding the `apparatus' as a quantum computer register which can be prepared in appropriate states by running a Fourier transform algorithm on the data stored within it. The resolution of the measurement rises exponentially with the number of ions used.

We propose two quantum error correction schemes which increase the maximum storage time for qubits in a system of cold trapped ions, using a minimal number of ancillary qubits. Both schemes consider only the errors introduced by the decoherence due to spontaneous emission from the upper levels of the ions. Continuous monitoring of the ion fluorescence is used in conjunction with selective coherent feedback to eliminate these errors immediately following spontaneous emission events, and the conditional time evolution between quantum jumps is removed by symmetrizing the quantum codewords.