Generation of Dicke states using adiabatic passage

Entangled states of two ions are realized by using an adiabatic process. Based on the proposal by Linington and Vitanov [Phys. Rev. A 77, 010302 (2008)], we have generated Dicke states in optical qubits of two Ca-40(+) ions by applying frequency-chirped optical pulses with time-dependent envelopes to perform rapid adiabatic passage on sideband transitions. One of the biggest advantages of adiabatic approaches is their robustness against variations in experimental parameters, which is verified by performing experiments for different pulse widths or peak Rabi frequencies. Fidelities exceeding 0.5, which is the threshold for inseparable states, are obtained over wide ranges of parameter values.