X. X. Yi

A relation between entanglement and criticality of spin chains is established. The entanglement we exploit is shared between auxiliary particles, which are isolated from each other, but are coupled to the same critical spin-1/2 chain. We analytically evaluate the reduced density matrix, and numerically show the entanglement of the auxiliary particles in the proximity of the critical points of the spin chain. We find that the entanglement induced by the spin-chain may reach one, and it can signal very well the critical points of the chain. A physical understanding and experimental realization with trapped ions are presented.

We propose a scheme for conditional quantum logic between two 3-state atoms that share a quantum data-bus such as a single mode optical field in cavity QED systems, or a collective vibrational state of trapped ions. Making use of quantum interference, our scheme achieves successful conditional phase evolution without any real transitions of atomic internal states or populating the quantum data-bus. In addition, it only requires common addressing of the two atoms by external laser fields.

The decoherence in trapped ion induced by coupling the ion to the engineered reservoir is studied in this paper. The engineered reservoir is simulated by random variations in the trap frequency, and the trapped ion is treated as a two-level system driven by a far off-resonant plane wave laser field. The dependence of the decoherence rate on the amplitude of the superposition state is given.