Chiral-coupling-assisted refrigeration in trapped ions

Abstract: The tapped ions can be cooled close to their motional ground state, which is imperative in implementing quantum computation and quantum simulation. Here we demonstrate the capability of light-mediated chiral couplings between ions, which enables a superior cooling scheme exceeding the single-ion limit of sideband cooling. We present the chiral-coupling-assisted refrigeration in the target ion at the price of heating the others under asymmetric drivings, where its steady-state phonon occupation outperforms the lower bound set by a single ion. We further locate the optimal operation condition of the refrigeration and identify the parameter region where a faster rate of cooling emerges. Under an additional nonguided decay channel, the heating effect in the reciprocal coupling regime becomes suppressed and turns into cooling instead. Our results present a resource of collective chiral couplings which help surpass the bottleneck of cooling procedure in applications of trapped-ion-based quantum computer and simulator.