The prospect of quantum-simulating lattice gauge theories opens exciting possibilities for understanding fundamental forms of matter. Together with colleagues from the University of Innsbruck (Austria), we show that trapped ions represent a promising platform in this context when simultaneously exploiting internal pseudospins and external phonon vibrations.
We illustrate our ideas with two complementary proposals for simulating lattice-regularized quantum electrodynamics (QED) in (1+1) space-time dimensions. Both schemes work on energy scales significantly larger than typical decoherence rates in experiments, thus enabling the investigation of phenomena such as string breaking, Coleman’s quantum phase transition, and false-vacuum decay. The underlying ideas of the proposed analog simulation schemes may also be adapted to other platforms, such as superconducting qubits.