Information entropy of a time-dependent three-level trapped ion interacting with a laser field

Trapped and laser-cooled ions are increasingly used for a variety of modem high-precision experiments, frequency standard applications and quantum information processing. Therefore, in this communication we present a comprehensive analysis of the pattern of information entropy arising in the time evolution of an ion interacting with a laser field. A general analytic approach is proposed for a three-level trapped-ion system in the presence of the time-dependent couplings. By working out an exact analytic solution, we conclusively analyse the general properties of the von Neumann entropy and quantum information entropy. It is shown that the information entropy is affected strongly by the time-dependent coupling and exhibits long time periodic oscillations. This feature attributed to the fact that in the time-dependent region Rabi oscillation is time dependent. Using parameters corresponding to a specific three-level ionic system, a single beryllium ion in a RF-(Paul) trap, we obtain illustrative examples of some novel aspects of this system in the dynamical evolution. Our results establish an explicit relation between the exact information entropy and the entanglement between the multilevel ion and the laser field. We show that different nonclassical effects arise in the dynamics of the ionic population inversion, depending on the initial states of the vibrational motion/field and on the values of Lamb-Dicke parameter eta.