Ion crystals in anharmonic traps
Quantum Physics
2017-01-13 v2 Quantum Gases
Statistical Mechanics
Abstract
There is currently intensive research into creating a large-scale quantum computer with trapped ions. It is well known that for a linear ion crystal in a harmonic potential, the ions near the center are more closely spaced compared to the ions near the ends. This is problematic as the number of ions increases. Here, we consider a linear ion crystal in an anharmonic potential that is purely quartic in position. We find that the ions are more evenly spaced compared to the harmonic case. We develop a variational approach to calculate the properties of the ground state. We also characterize the zigzag transition in an anharmonic potential.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1610.01104,
title = {Ion crystals in anharmonic traps},
author = {S. R. Bastin and Tony E. Lee},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1610.01104},
year = {2017}
}
Comments
5 pages, 5 figures