Pattern formation with trapped ions

TL;DR

This paper proposes an experiment with trapped ions to study nonequilibrium pattern formation, leveraging laser-induced dissipation and trap anharmonicity, revealing unique oscillatory and excitable behaviors in the collective dynamics.

Contribution

It introduces a novel experimental setup with trapped ions to explore pattern formation governed by a complex Ginzburg-Landau-like equation with reactive coupling, including noise effects.

Findings

Patterns are observable with realistic parameters.

The system exhibits both oscillatory and excitable behavior.

Noise and disorder can be controlled experimentally.

Abstract

Ion traps are a versatile tool to study nonequilibrium statistical physics, due to the tunability of dissipation and nonlinearity. We propose an experiment with a chain of trapped ions, where dissipation is provided by laser heating and cooling, while nonlinearity is provided by trap anharmonicity and beam shaping. The collective dynamics are governed by an equation similar to the complex Ginzburg-Landau equation, except that the reactive nature of the coupling leads to qualitatively different behavior. The system has the unusual feature of being both oscillatory and excitable at the same time. We account for noise from spontaneous emission and find that the patterns are observable for realistic experimental parameters. Our scheme also allows controllable experiments with noise and quenched disorder.