Southwest Quantum Information and Technology

Quantum simulation and sensitive force detection using hundreds of ions in a Penning trap

Presenting Author: Justin Bohnet, National Institute of Standards and Technology
Contributing Author(s): K. Gilmore, B. C. Sawyer, J. W. Britton, M. L. Wall, M. Gaerttner, A. Safavinaini, M. Foss-Feig, A. M. Rey and J. J. Bollinger

Systems of trapped ions have made substantial progress as simulators of quantum magnetic models. But increasing a simulator’s complexity by controlling more than 30 ions is an outstanding challenge. Here we perform quantum simulations of long range Ising spin models far from equilibrium using hundreds of beryillium ions in a Penning trap. We benchmark the fidelity of the quantum simulator by producing entangled states in planar arrays of ions, directly observing spin- squeezed states with up to 6.0 dB of spectroscopic enhancement. We show how the ability to time-reverse the spin dynamics allows for tracking the spread of quantum information through the system by measuring out-of-time-order correlation functions. To study the stability of the center-of-mass mode of the ions, one of the limitations to our simulations, we use the spin-motion coupling of the ions to sense small electric fields, which we present in terms of detection of sub-yoctoNewton forces. In the future, we will apply these techniques to simulations of non-trivial spin models, such as the XY model and the transverse field Ising model with variable range interactions.

(Session 5 : Thursday from 5:00pm - 7:00pm)