Both laser-cooled atomic ions and neutral atoms in electromagnetic traps provide pristine quantum systems that can be engineered from the ground up to an unprecedented level of control. Atoms interacting with lasers offer unmatched coherence properties, deterministic entanglement generation and nearly perfect detection of individual quantum systems. In our lab we will use trapped ions and neutral atoms to assemble atom-by-atom quantum systems whose parameters can be tailored microscopically to investigate unexplored quantum many-body phenomena and tackle new ways of processing quantum information.

Trapped-Ion Quantum Simulator

Laser cooled trapped ions self-organize in Coulomb crystals with well-defined collective motional modes, which are used as quantum buses to process quantum information. In an analog quantum simulator this gives rise to effective spin Hamiltonians where the spin degree of freedom is encoded in two atomic internal states. We aim to employ these systems to study spin Hamiltonians with long-range interactions in a regime where classical computers struggle to give exact predictions. Using individual addressing of pristine trapped-ion qubits allows to tailor both unitary and dissipative evolutions of many-body systems and opens up new exciting directions, including the realization of quantum spin glass models, the simulation of engineered open-quantum systems, the experimental realization of high energy physics models and many more…Here are more details on our research directions: