The beam splitter and phase shifter, which are the key elements in the experiments of light interference, are realized in the motion of trapped ions. Some applications, such as the creation of quantum motional states and the realization of Mach-Zehnder interferometer, are illustrated. Several detection methods of motional states used in the interferometer are also discussed.
We propose a method to create two-mode squeezed states and their superposition in the center-of-mass mode and breathing mode of two-trapped ions. Each ion is illuminated simultaneously by two standing waves. One of the fields is tuned to excite resonantly and simultaneously both upper sidebands of the two normal modes, while the other field tuned to the corresponding lower sidebands.
We showed that in Lamb-Dicke regime and under rotating wave approximation, the dynamical behavior of two trapped ions interacting with a laser beam resonant to the first red side-band of center-of-mass mode can be described by Jaynes-Cummings Model. An exact analytic solution for this kind of Jaynes-Cummings model is presented. The results showed that quantum collapses and revivals for the occupation of two atoms, and squeezing for vibratic motion of center-of-mass mode existed in both two different types of initial conditions. The maximum momentum squeezing for center-of-mass mode in these two types of conditions are found to be 42.4% and 43.8% respectively. The coherence, in the first type of initial conditions can keeps long times, and in the second type of initial conditions, a concrete form of coherent state is obtained, when the initial average number is very small.
We present a scheme to prepare a quantum state in a ion trap with probability approaching to one by means of ion trap quantum computing and Grover's quantum search algorithm acting on trapped ions.
We present a nonlinear decoherence model which models decoherence effect caused by various decohereing sources in a quantum system through a nonlinear coupling between the system and its environment, and apply it to investigating decoherence in nonclassical motional states of a single trapped ion. We obtain an exactly analytic solution of the model and find very good agreement with experimental results for the population decay rate of a single trapped ion observed in the NIST experiments by Meekhof and coworkers (D. M. Meekhof, {\it et al.}, Phys. Rev. Lett. {\bf 76}, 1796 (1996)).