2011/07/31 by Roman Schmied, Janus H. Wesenberg, Dietrich Leibfried · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #quant-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1088/1367-2630/13/11/115011
published as New Journal of Physics 13 (2011) 115011 · 24 pages, 7 figures. v2: simplified the derivation of (28) without changing conclusions; minor edits. v3: minor edits
arxiv created 2011/11/30 · arxiv updated 2011/12/01
We present a detailed study of quantum simulations of coupled spin systems in surface-electrode ion-trap arrays, and illustrate our findings with a proposed implementation of the hexagonal Kitaev model [A. Kitaev, Annals of Physics 321,2 (2006)]. The effective (pseudo)spin interactions making up such quantum simulators are found to be proportional to the dipole-dipole interaction between the trapped ions, and are mediated by motion which can be driven by state-dependent forces. The precise forms of the trapping potentials and the interactions are derived in the presence of a surface electrode and a cover electrode. These results are the starting point to derive an optimized surface-electrode geometry for trapping ions in the desired honeycomb lattice of Kitaev's model, where we design the dipole-dipole interactions in a way that allows for coupling all three bond types of the model simultaneously, without the need for time discretization. Finally we propose a simple wire structure that can be incorporated in a microfabricated chip to generate localized state-dependent forces which drive the couplings prescribed by this particular model; such a wire structure should be adaptable to many other situations.