Temperature driven structural phase transition for trapped ions and its experimental detection

Abstract

A Wigner crystal formed with trapped ion can undergo structural phase transition, which is determined only by the mechanical conditions on a classical level. Instead of this classical result, we show that through consideration of quantum and thermal fluctuation, a structural phase transition can be solely driven by change of the system's temperature. We determine a finite-temperature phase diagram for trapped ions using the renormalization group method and the path integral formalism, and propose an experimental scheme to observe the predicted temperature-driven structural phase transition, which is well within the reach of the current ion trap technology.

4 pages, 5 figures

References in corpus (5)

• Quantum computing with trapped ions
• Structural phase transitions in low-dimensional ion crystals
• Large Scale Quantum Computation in an Anharmonic Linear Ion Trap
• Double wells, scalar fields and quantum phase transitions in ions traps
• Nonlinear coupling of continuous variables at the single quantum level

Cited by in corpus (6)

• Quantum Magnetism of Spin-Ladder Compounds with Trapped-Ion Crystals
• Structural transitions of ion strings in quantum potentials
• Dynamics of superconducting vortices driven by oscillatory forces in the plastic flow regime
• Intrinsic anharmonic effects on the phonon frequencies and effective spin-spin interactions in a quantum simulator made from trapped ions in a linear Paul trap
• Operator-based derivation of phonon modes and characterization of correlations for trapped ions at zero and finite temperature
• Finite temperature crossover from a crystalline to a cluster phase for a confined finite chain of ions