A cloud of 40Ca+is successfully trapped and cooled using the radiation of a red-detuned 397 nm laser beam and a resonant 866 nm laser beam in our prototype linear ion trap,which was designed and constructed for studying quantum information processing.We have characterized the size of the ion cloud,estimating the temperature to be in the order of milli-Kelvins.
Quantum walk is different from random walk in reversibility and interference. Observation of the reduced reversibility in a realistic quantum walk is of scientific interest in understanding the unique quantum behavior. We propose an idea to experimentally investigate the decoherence-induced irreversibility of quantum walks with trapped ions in phase space via the average fidelity decay. By introducing two controllable decoherence sources, i.e., the phase damping channel （i.e., dephasing） and the high temperature amplitude reservoir （i.e., dissipation）, in the intervals between the steps of quantum walk, we find that the high temperature amplitude reservoir shows more detrimental effects than the phase damping channel on quantum walks. Our study also shows that the average fidelity decay works better than the position variance for characterizing the transition from quantum walks to random walk. Experimental feasibility to monitor the irreversibility is justified using currently available techniques.
This paper reports that a cloud of laser-cooled ^40Ca^＋ is successfully trapped and manipulated in the home-built linear ion trap constructed for quantum information processing （QIP）. The frequency of the secular motion and the space charge density of the ion cloud are measured, which help knowing the characteristic of the trapping potential and are the prerequisite of QIP with the trapped ions.
