Figure 3
Depiction of the harmonic oscillator potential and the wave packets for each component of the ion’s internal states, denoted
and
. The images are snapshots in time; for images (c) through (f) the wave packets are shown at the extremes of their motion. The areas of the wave packets correspond to the probability of finding the atom in the given internal state. (a) The initial wave packet corresponds to the ground state of motion after laser cooling and preparation of the
internal state. (b) A
carrier pulse creates the internal-state superposition
. (c) An oscillating optical-dipole force is applied that excites only the
component of the superposition to a coherent state of amplitude
, creating the state
. (d) The spin states are flipped by applying a carrier
pulse. (e) The wave packet associated with the
state is excited by the optical-dipole force to an amplitude of
, that is, out of phase with respect to the first excitation. This is the state of Eq. (
6). (f) To analyze the state produced in step (e) and verify phase coherence between the components of the cat wave function, we apply a final
carrier pulse and then measure the probability
of the ion to be in state
(see text). From
101.
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