Changsuk Noh

We introduce the term Majoranon to describe particles that obey the Majorana equation, which are different from the Majorana fermions widely studied in various physical systems. A general procedure to simulate the corresponding Majoranon dynamics, based on a decomposition of the Majorana equation into two Dirac equations, is described in detail. It allows the simulation of the two-component chiral spinors, the building blocks of modern gauge theories, in the laboratory with current technology. Specifically, a Majoranon in one spatial dimension can be simulated with a single qubit plus a continuous degree of freedom, for example a single trapped ion. Interestingly, the dynamics of a Majoranon deviates most clearly from that of a Dirac particle in the rest frame, in which the continuous variable is redundant, making a possible laboratory implementation feasible with existing set ups.

We propose a scheme to simulate the dynamics of neutrino oscillations using trapped ions. For neutrinos in 1+1 dimensions, our scheme is experimentally implementable with existing trapped ion technology. We show that the three generation neutrino oscillations can be realized with three ions for 1+3 and 1+1 dimensions where the latter case only requires experimentally proven two-ion interactions. For this case, we discuss two setups utilizing different types of spin-spin interactions. Our method can be readily applied to two generation neutrino oscillations requiring fewer ions and lasers. We give a brief outline of a possible experimental scenario.