Dresden 2014 – scientific programme

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TT: Fachverband Tiefe Temperaturen

TT 37: Cold Atomic Gases

TT 37.10: Topical Talk

Tuesday, April 1, 2014, 12:15–12:45, HSZ 304

Mesoscopic Transport of Heat in Trapped-Ion Crystals — •Martin Bruderer¹, Alejandro Bermudez^1,2, and Martin B. Plenio¹ — ¹Institut für Theoretische Physik, Albert-Einstein-Allee 11, Universität Ulm, 89069 Ulm, Germany — ²Instituto de Fisica Fundamental, IFF-CSIC, Calle Serrano 113b, Madrid E-28006, Spain

Measuring and controlling heat flow on the nanoscale poses formidable practical difficulties as elementary devices such as switches and ’ampere meters’ for thermal currents are not available. We propose to overcome this problem by realizing heat transport through a chain of trapped ions, where steady-state currents of local vibrations (vibrons) are induced by a constant temperature difference between the edges of the chain. We show how to efficiently control and measure these currents by coupling vibrons to internal ion states, which can be easily manipulated in experiments. Trapped-ion crystals therefore provide a promising platform for studying heat transport, e.g., through thermal analogues of quantum wires and quantum dots. Specifically, elusive phenomena such as the onset of Fourier’s law may be observable in trapped-ion systems.
A. Bermudez, M. Bruderer and M. B. Plenio, Phys. Rev. Lett. 111, 040601 (2013)