Quantum harmonic oscillator state synthesis by reservoir engineering
Daniel Kienzler, H.-Y. Lo, B. C. Keitch, Ludwig de Clercq, Florian Leupold, Frieder Lindenfelser, Matteo Marinelli, Vlad Negnevitsky, Jonathan Home · Science · 2014
The robust generation of quantum states in the presence of decoherence is a primary challenge for explorations of quantum mechanics at larger scales. Using the mechanical motion of a single trapped ion, we utilize reservoir engineering to generate squeezed, coherent, and displaced-squeezed states as steady states in the presence of noise. We verify the created state by generating two-state correlated spin-motion Rabi oscillations, resulting in high-contrast measurements. For both cooling and measurement, we use spin-oscillator couplings that provide transitions between oscillator states in an engineered Fock state basis. Our approach should facilitate studies of entanglement, quantum computation, and open-system quantum simulations in a wide range of physical systems.