Experimental Realization of Thermal Reservoirs with Tunable Temperature in a Trapped-Ion Spin-Boson Simulator

We propose and demonstrate an experimental scheme to engineer thermal baths with independently tunable temperatures and dissipation rates for the motional modes of a trapped-ion system. This approach enables robust thermal-state preparation and quantum simulations of open-system dynamics in bosonic and spin-boson models at well-controlled finite temperatures. We benchmark our protocol by experimentally realizing out-of-equilibrium dynamics of a charge-transfer model at different temperatures. We observe that, when the process occurs at a higher temperature, the transfer rate spectrum broadens, with reduced rates at small donor-acceptor energy gaps and enhanced rates at large gaps. We then employ our scheme to study local-temperature effects in a two-mode vibrationally assisted exciton transfer system, where we observe thermally activated interference pathways for excitation transfer.

💡 Research Summary

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In this work the authors present a versatile experimental protocol for engineering finite‑temperature bosonic reservoirs in a trapped‑ion platform, and they demonstrate how independent control of both the bath temperature and the dissipation rate can be achieved for one or several motional modes. The scheme combines laser cooling (which provides a controllable cooling rate γ_c) with stochastic electric‑field driving (which supplies a heating rate γ_h). According to the Lindblad master equation

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