EXPERIMENTAL ISSUES IN COHERENT QUANTUM-STATE MANIPULATION OF TRAPPEDATOMIC IONS

Methods for, and limitations to, the generation of entangled states of trapped atomic ions are examined. As much as possible, state manipula tions are described in terms of quantum logic operations since the con ditional dynamics implicit in quantum logic is central to the creation of entanglement. Keeping with current interest, some experimental iss ues in the proposal for trapped-ion quantum computation by J. I. Cirac and P.Zoller (University of Innsbruck) are discussed. Several possibl e decoherence mechanisms are examined and what may be the more importa nt of these are identified. Some potential applications for entangled states of trapped-ions which lie outside the immediate realm of quantu m computation are also discussed.