Tuning heat transport in trapped-ion chains across a structural phase transition

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Date: 
2014-01-25
Author(s): 

Antonia Ruiz, Daniel Alonso, Martin B. Plenio and Adolfo del Campo

Reference: 

arXiv:1401.5480

We explore heat transport across an ion Coulomb crystal beyond the harmonic regime by tuning it across the structural phase transition between the linear and zigzag configurations. This demonstrates that the control of the spatial ion distribution by varying the trapping frequencies renders ion Coulomb crystals an ideal test-bed to study heat transport properties in finite open system of tunable non-linearities.