Experimental Issues in Coherent Quantum-State Manipulation of Trapped Atomic Ions

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