Abstract
The Jahn-Teller effect explains distortions and nondegenerate energy levels in molecular and solid-state physics via a coupling of effective spins to collective bosons. Here we propose and theoretically analyze the quantum simulation of a many-body Jahn-Teller model with linear ion crystals subjected to magnetic field gradients. We show that the system undergoes a quantum magnetic structural phase transition which leads to a reordering of particle positions and the formation of a spin-phonon quasicondensate in mesoscopic ion chains.
- Received 16 January 2012
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.108.235701
© 2012 American Physical Society