Simulating the Haldane Phase in Trapped Ion Spins Using Optical Fields

We propose to experimentally explore the Haldane phase in spin-one XXZ antiferromagnetic chains using trapped ions. We show how to adiabatically prepare the ground states of the Haldane phase, demonstrate their robustness against sources of experimental noise, and propose ways to detect the Haldane ground states based on their excitation gap and exponentially decaying correlations, nonvanishing nonlocal string order, and doubly-degenerate entanglement spectrum.

Multi-Qubit Gate with Trapped Ions for Microwave and Laser-Based Implementation

A proposal for a phase gate and a M{o}lmer-S{o}rensen (MS) gate in the dressed state basis is presented. In order to perform the multi-qubit interaction, a strong magnetic field gradient is required to couple the phonon-bus to the qubit states. The gate is performed using resonant microwave driving fields together with either a radio-frequency (RF) driving field, or additional detuned microwave driving fields. The gate is robust to ambient magnetic field fluctuations due to an applied resonant microwave driving field. Furthermore, the gate is robust to fluctuations in the microwave Rabi frequency and is decoupled from phonon dephasing due to a resonant RF or a detuned microwave driving field. This makes this new gate an attractive candidate for the implementation of high-fidelity microwave based multi-qubit gates. The proposal can also be realized in laser-based set-ups.