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Quantum physics

Trapped ion set to quiver

Nature volume 463, pages 37–39 (2010)Cite this article

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The peculiar ultra-fast trembling motion of a free electron — the Zitterbewegung predicted by Erwin Schrödinger in 1930 when he scrutinized the Dirac equation — has been simulated using a single trapped ion.

In seeking to investigate the properties of a particular system, natural scientists often encounter situations in which the difficulty in accessing and tuning the system of interest experimentally prevents such investigation being made. An effective, and widely used, remedy for these unfortunate instances is the numerical simulation of the system's properties and behaviour on a computer. However, in many cases, faithful digital replication of the system is not possible because of limitations in computing power and memory. These limitations become prohibitive for systems governed by the laws of quantum mechanics, not least for many-body quantum systems, because the range of possible system states grows exponentially with the number of system constituents.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Christof Wunderlich is in the Department of Physics, University of Siegen, Siegen 57068, Germany. wunderlich@physik.uni-siegen.de,

    Christof Wunderlich

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  1. Christof Wunderlich
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Wunderlich, C. Trapped ion set to quiver. Nature 463, 37–39 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/463037a

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