Exploring the Many-Body Dynamics Near a Conical Intersection with Trapped Rydberg Ions

Abstract

Conical intersections between electronic potential energy surfaces are paradigmatic for the study of nonadiabatic processes in the excited states of large molecules. However, since the corresponding dynamics occurs on a femtosecond timescale, their investigation remains challenging and requires ultrafast spectroscopy techniques. We demonstrate that trapped Rydberg ions are a platform to engineer conical intersections and to simulate their ensuing dynamics on larger length and time scales of the order of nanometers and microseconds, respectively; all this in a highly controllable system. Here, the shape of the potential energy surfaces and the position of the conical intersection can be tuned thanks to the interplay between the high polarizability and the strong dipolar exchange interactions of Rydberg ions. We study how the presence of a conical intersection affects both the nuclear and electronic dynamics demonstrating, in particular, how it results in the inhibition of the nuclear motion. These effects can be monitored in real time via a direct spectroscopic measurement of the electronic populations in a state-of-the-art experimental setup.

Direct observation of geometric-phase interference in dynamics around a conical intersection

“…Most of these quantum simulations have been performed in reciprocal space to simulate solid-state systems, including geometric phases around Dirac points [3,32,33]. Theoretical proposals for simulating molecular conical intersections have included using trapped Rydberg ions to simulate electronic populations [34], circuit quantum electrodynamics to simulate emission spectra [35], and cavity quantum electrodynamics to simulate collapse-revival characteristics of a spreading wavepacket [36]. To date, the only experimental quantum simulation of a chemical conical intersection demonstrated branching between different photochemical reaction products with strong dissipation [37].…”

Enhanced Parameter Estimation with Periodically Driven Quantum Probe

“…Recently, the Rydberg trapped ion realization of the Jahn-Teller modes was proposed in Reference [20].…”

Dipole-dipole-interaction–driven antiblockade of two Rydberg atoms

“…It has been shown that RAB can be used to limit the blockade error [40], and to construct the multiple qubit Toffoli and Fan-out gates in a fast way [41]. Recently, it has been shown that non-adiabatic dynamics around a conical intersection can be studied under the RAB condition with trapped Rydberg ions [42].…”