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Ph.D. Thesis - Physics

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involved. Because ions near the center of the trap experience oscillating electric fields in<br />

opposite directions, their relative motion may be higher than ions further from the trap<br />

center, even though each individual ion experiences greater micromotion.<br />

7.2.2 Effect of micromotion on quantum simulations<br />

The calculation of micromotion amplitudes is important, but the much more interesting<br />

(and hotly debated) question is what effect this micromotion has on the fidelity of quantum<br />

simulation. We now endeavor to answer this question. We will limit our study here to a<br />

specific Hamiltonian, the transverse Ising model, which is one example of a Hamiltonian<br />

under which spin frustration may occur. In a typical experiment, antiferromagnetism is<br />

produced by using the “radial” modes [PC04b], which in the parlance of Porras and Cirac<br />

means the modes perpendicular to the line segment that connects the two ions and per-<br />

pendicular also to the plane of the trap, i.e. the vertical (ˆz) direction. In this case, the<br />

interaction is a short-range dipolar one, with the coupling constant J ∝ 1/d 3 , where d is<br />

the ion-ion distance. We are accordingly concerned with short-range, pairwise interactions.<br />

Therefore, most of the calculations study the effect of micromotion on two ions.<br />

The question we ask is this: for a given Hamiltonian, simulation time, and set of trap<br />

parameters (including micromotion amplitude), what is the fidelity of the quantum simu-<br />

lation as compared to the simulation in the absence of micromotion? We want to study<br />

the behavior of the system for a number of cases that we believe to be relevant for future<br />

experiments:<br />

• Constant F in space and time.<br />

• F constant in space, but adiabatically ramped up.<br />

• F varying in space, and following constant or adiabatic time dependence.<br />

The approximation that F is constant in space is good if F varies weakly across the<br />

region of space occupied by a given ion, which, in the presence of micromotion, may be up to<br />

a few hundred nanometers. If a standing-wave optical force is used, then the spatial extent<br />

of the ion trajectory is comparable to the gradient of the force, and the spatial dependence<br />

must be accounted for.<br />

Methods<br />

The Hamiltonian that we consider is the transverse Ising model. We define the ˆz, ˆx, and ˆy<br />

axes as being the principal axes of the elliptical trap in order of decreasing secular frequency,<br />

while Z, X, and Y are the Pauli operators for the ionic internal states along each of these<br />

directions. We shall simulate<br />

161

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