Journal
PHYSICAL REVIEW LETTERS
Volume 106, Issue 1, Pages -Publisher
AMER PHYSICAL SOC
DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.106.010401
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Funding
- Israel Science Foundation (ISF)
- U.S.-Israel Binational Science Foundation (BSF)
- Minerva Center of Nonlinear Physics of Complex Systems, MOST [3-5792]
- German Research Foundation (DFG)
- European Commission
- Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation [FIS2007-66944]
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A string of trapped ions at zero temperature exhibits a structural phase transition to a zigzag structure, tuned by reducing the transverse trap potential or the interparticle distance. The transition is driven by transverse, short wavelength vibrational modes. We argue that this is a quantum phase transition, which can be experimentally realized and probed. Indeed, by means of a mapping to the Ising model in a transverse field, we estimate the quantum critical point in terms of the system parameters, and find a finite, measurable deviation from the critical point predicted by the classical theory. A measurement procedure is suggested which can probe the effects of quantum fluctuations at criticality. These results can be extended to describe the transverse instability of ultracold polar molecules in a one-dimensional optical lattice.
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