Schrödinger cat states and generalized state ladders

Seminar

I will present work in which we use bi- and trichomatric laser fields coupling the spin and motional degrees of freedom of a single trapped ion to perform quantum state engineering, measurement, and control. This generalizes the Jaynes-Cummings and anti-Jaynes Cummings Hamiltonians which are the standard tools of trapped-ion quantum control. We reproduce the physics of these Hamiltonians working in a transformed Fock state basis, which is chosen through the relative phase and strength of different frequency components of the laser. Examples include squeezed and displaced Fock state ladders, which we explore experimentally. This has led to methods for state preparation (Science 347, D. Kienzler et al. 2015) and state analysis (Nature 521 H.-Yu. Lo et al. 2015; PRL. 116, D. Kienzler at al. 2016), which we recently applied to investigate the quantum interference of a Schrödinger cat state separated by 240 nm where each part of the state had a root-mean square size of 7.8 nm (PRL. 116, D. Kienzler at al.).

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