Evaluating states in trapped ions with local correlation between internal and motional degrees of freedom

TL;DR

This paper introduces a scalable method for measuring internal and motional states of trapped ions with high resolution, enabling detailed study of quantum phase transitions in polaritonic systems for large-scale quantum simulations.

Contribution

It presents a new technique for simultaneous state detection in trapped ions, advancing the capability for quantum simulation of correlated polaritonic excitations.

Findings

Successful measurement of correlated internal and motional states

Observation of quantum phase transitions in polaritonic excitations

Demonstration of a scalable approach for large-scale quantum simulations

Abstract

We propose and demonstrate a scalable scheme for the simultaneous determination of internal and motional states in trapped ions with single-site resolution. The scheme is applied to the study of polaritonic excitations in the Jaynes- Cummings Hubbard model with trapped ions, in which the internal and motional states of the ions are strongly correlated. We observe quantum phase transitions of polaritonic excitations in two ions by directly evaluating their variances per ion site. Our work establishes an essential technological method for large-scale quantum simulations of polaritonic systems.