Abstracts

Preparation and coherent manipulation of pure quantum states of a single molecular ion

Presenting Author: Dietrich Leibfried, NIST, Boulder
Contributing Author(s): C. W. Chou, C. Kurz, D. B. Hume, P. N. Plessow and D. R. Leibrand

An amazing level of control is routinely reached in modern experiments with atoms, but similar control over molecules has been an elusive goal. We recently proposed a method based on quantum logic spectroscopy [1] to address this problem for a wide class of molecular ions [2]. We have now realized the basic elements of this proposal. In our demonstration, we trap a calcium ion together with a calcium hydride ion (CaH+) that is a convenient stand-in for more general molecular ions. We cool the two-ion crystal to its motional ground state and then drive the motional sidebands of Raman transitions in the molecular ion. A transition of the molecule is indicated by a single quantum of excitation in the secular motion of the pair. We can efficiently detect this single quantum with the calcium ion, which projects the molecule into the final state of the attempted sideband transition, leaving the molecule in a known, pure quantum state. The molecule can be coherently manipulated after the projection, and its final state read out by another quantum logic state detection. We demonstrate this by driving Rabi oscillations between rotational states. All transitions we address in the molecule are driven by a single, far off-resonant continuous-wave laser. This makes our approach applicable to control and precision measurement of a large class of molecular ions. Other QI projects in the NIST Ion Storage group will be briefly summarized. [1] P.O. Schmidt, et al. Science 309, 749 (2005) [2] D. Leibfried, New J. Phys. 14, 023029 (2012) *supported by ARO, IARPA, ONR, and the NIST Quantum Information program

(Session 11 : Saturday from 11:00am - 11:30am)

 

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