CONTROL OF TRAPPED-ION MOTION FOR MOLECULAR SPECTROSCOPY AND QUANTUM INFORMATION PROCESSING

Abstract

Control and manipulation of trapped-ion motion are basic building blocks for quantum information processing and precision measurement with trapped ions. First, I present a proposal to prepare, detect and manipulate the state of a molecular ion using quantum logic techniques, and its experimental validation in a proof-of-principle experiment with two different isotopes of Yb. I also describe our experiment to control the motion of a trapped atomic ion using microwave radiation assisted by a running optical lattice. The spin-motion coupling is exploited to demonstrate sideband cooling to the ground state of motion. Finally, I discuss the coupling between two normal modes of a two-ion crystal that is formally analogous to the process of the optical down-conversion. It is exploited to demonstrate phonon down-conversion (up-conversion) at the single quanta level. This coupling allows us to directly measure the parity and Wigner function of the ions? motional state.