Study of decoherence in radial local phonon hopping within trapped-ion string

TL;DR

This paper investigates how local phonon hopping in a trapped-ion string decoheres over time, analyzing experimental and numerical data to understand the underlying mechanisms affecting coherence in quantum systems.

Contribution

It introduces a systematic method to evaluate phonon hopping coherence and elucidates the nonlinear mode coupling as a decoherence source.

Findings

Decay of phonon hopping depends on trap parameters

Coherence loss is linked to nonlinear mode coupling

Numerical simulations align with experimental trends

Abstract

We systematically investigate local phonon hopping in the radial direction of a linear trapped-ion string. We measure the decay of hopping as a function of key trap parameters and analyze the results in terms of the decay time and the number of oscillations. We attribute the loss of coherence to nonlinear coupling between different modes. Despite quantitative differences, the overall trends in our numerical simulations are similar to those of the experimental results. This work establishes a method for evaluating phonon hopping coherence and provides insight into the underlying decoherence mechanisms.