The IMM colloquium takes place every 4th Tuesday of the month at 16.00 hrs.
Schedule
26 May 2026: The collective motion of the ions: new opportunities for quantum enhanced sensing and simulation by dr. Safavi Naini.
23 June 2026: tba
Abstract Safavi Naini:
The Hamiltonians underlying many quantum simulation and computation platforms contains spin and bosonic degrees of freedom. The interplay of these two degrees of freedom, one discrete and the other continuous, provides new avenues for quantum computing, simulation, and sensing. In this talk I will focus on the trapped-ion quantum simulators where the collective motional modes of the ion crystal form the bosonic degree of freedom and the internal levels of the ions form the discrete spins. I will show results from a recent theory-experiment collaboration where we investigated the dynamical phase diagram of the Dicke model [1] in a system of ~100 ions. Next, I will describe how the same system can be used to realise a new theoretically proposed protocol for quantum enhanced sensing with applications to measuring single photon scattering to searches for dark matter.
[1] arxiv.org/abs/2602.06114 (to appear in Nature)
[2] https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.25870 (to appear in PRX quantum)
