Stuttgart 2012 – scientific programme

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Q: Fachverband Quantenoptik und Photonik

Q 50: Kalte Atome: Manipulation und Detektion

Q 50.8: Talk

Thursday, March 15, 2012, 15:45–16:00, V7.03

Formation of helical ion chains — •Ramil Nigmatullin^1,2, Adolfo del Campo³, Gabriele de Chiara^4,5, Giovanna Morigi⁶, Martin Plenio^1,2, and Alex Retzker¹ — ¹Ulm University, Ulm, Germany — ²Imperial College London, London, UK — ³Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, USA — ⁴Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain — ⁵Queen's University Belfast, Belfast, UK — ⁶University of Saarlandes, Saarbruecken

We study the formation of helices in the structural phase transition of linear Wigner crystals to zigzag Wigner crystals. Wigner crystals are confined radially by a harmonic potential and with periodic boundary conditions in the axial direction, which in principle can be realized experimentally using ring ion traps. Molecular dynamics simulations are used to show that the dependence of the average winding number of the helix is consistent with the prediction of the Kibble-Zurek mechanism.