Correlated many-body noise and emergent $1/f$ behavior in an anharmonic fluctuator model

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that superradiant phonon interactions among adatoms can reduce electric field noise in ion traps and reveals a novel mechanism for the emergence of 1/f noise from a single fluctuator type.

Contribution

It introduces an exact mapping for noise spectra in multi-level fluctuators and shows how 1/f noise can arise from a single fluctuator type through many-body effects.

Findings

Superradiant phonon exchange reduces electric field noise at low temperatures.

An exact mapping relates multi-level fluctuator noise to two-level dipoles.

Conditions are identified where 1/f noise emerges from a single fluctuator type.

Abstract

Fluctuating electric fields emanating from surfaces are a primary source of decoherence in trapped ion qubits. Here, we show that superradiant phonon-induced excitation exchange between adatoms can lead to a reduction of electric field noise at low temperatures. We derive an exact mapping between the noise spectrum of $N$ fluctuators with $M$ vibrational levels to $N+M-1 \choose N$-1 two-level dipoles. We provide conditions for which the ubiquitous $1/f$ noise can emerge, even though the system is composed of only a single type of fluctuator, thus suggesting a new mechanism for the phenomenon.