Stefano Mancini

We analyze the possible quantum correlations between two coupled dimer systems in the presence of independent losses and driven by a fluctuating field. For the case of the interaction being of a Heisenberg exchange type, we first analytically show the possibility for robust stationary entanglement for realistic values of the dissipation rates and then analyze its robustness as a function of the noise to signal ratio of the pump. We find that for a common fluctuating driving field, a stochastic resonance effect appears as function of the ratio between field strength and noise strength. The effect disappears in the case of uncorrelated or separate pumps. Our result is general and could be applied to different quantum systems ranging from electron spins in solid state, to ions trap technologies and cold atom set ups.

Recently it has been proposed to construct quantum error-correcting codes that embed a finite-dimensional Hilbert space in the infinite-dimensional Hilbert space of a system described by continuous quantum variables [D. Gottesman et al., Phys. Rev. A 64, 012310 (2001)]. The main difficulty of this continuous variable encoding relies on the physical generation of the quantum codewords. We show that ponderomotive interaction suffices to this end. As a matter of fact, this kind of interaction between a system and a meter causes a frequency change on the meter proportional to the position quadrature of the system. Then, a phase measurement of the meter leaves the system in an eigenstate of the stabilizer generators, provided that system and meter's initial states are suitably prepared. Here we show how to implement this interaction using trapped ions, and how the encoding can be performed on their motional degrees of freedom. The robustness of the codewords with respect to the various experimental imperfections is then analyzed.

We investigate the capabilities of a quantum computer based on cold trapped ions in presence of non-dissipative decoherence. The latter is accounted by using the evolution time as a random variable and then averaging on a properly defined probability distribution. Severe bounds on computational performances are found.

We show that by using a feedback loop it is possible to reduce the fluctuations in one quadrature of the vibrational degree of freedom of a trapped ion below the quantum limit. The stationary state is not a proper squeezed state, but rather a ``squashed'' state, since the uncertainty in the orthogonal quadrature, which is larger than the standard quantum limit, is unaffected by the feedback action.