Decoherence-free preparation of Dicke states of trapped ions by collective stimulated Raman adiabatic passage

TL;DR

This paper introduces a robust, decoherence-free method for preparing Dicke states in trapped ions using a collective adiabatic passage technique that is fast and resilient to experimental fluctuations.

Contribution

It presents a novel, scalable adiabatic protocol for generating Dicke states in ion chains, enhancing fidelity and robustness over previous methods.

Findings

Achieves approximately 98% fidelity for ten-ion Dicke states with current technology.

Demonstrates robustness against spontaneous emission and moderate experimental fluctuations.

Shows the process is rapid, minimizing heating effects in practical setups.

Abstract

We propose a simple technique for the generation of arbitrary-sized Dicke states in a chain of trapped ions. The method uses global addressing of the entire chain by two pairs of delayed but partially overlapping laser pulses to engineer a collective adiabatic passage along a multi-ion dark state. Our technique, which is a many-particle generalization of stimulated Raman adiabatic passage (STIRAP), is decoherence-free with respect to spontaneous emission and robust against moderate fluctuations in the experimental parameters. Furthermore, because the process is very rapid, the effects of heating are almost negligible under realistic experimental conditions. We predict that the overall fidelity of synthesis of a Dicke state involving ten ions sharing two excitations should approach 98% with currently achievable experimental parameters.