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Experimental Realization of Thermal Reservoirs with Tunable Temperature in a Trapped-Ion Spin-Boson Simulator

Visal So1,*, Mingjian Zhu1, Midhuna Duraisamy Suganthi1,2, Abhishek Menon1, George Tomaras1,2, Roman Zhuravel1, Han Pu1, and Guido Pagano1,†

  • 1Department of Physics and Astronomy and Smalley-Curl Institute, Rice University, Houston, Texas 77005, USA
  • 2Applied Physics Graduate Program, Smalley-Curl Institute, Rice University, Houston, Texas 77005, USA

  • *Contact author: vs39@rice.edu
  • †Contact author: pagano@rice.edu
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Phys. Rev. Lett. 137, 050604 – Published 30 July, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/mf8d-91ws

Abstract

We propose and demonstrate an experimental scheme to engineer thermal baths with independently tunable temperatures and dissipation rates for the motional modes of a trapped-ion system. This approach enables robust thermal-state preparation and quantum simulations of open-system dynamics in bosonic and spin-boson models at well-controlled finite temperatures. We benchmark our protocol by experimentally realizing out-of-equilibrium dynamics of a charge-transfer model at different temperatures. We observe that, when the process occurs at a higher temperature, the transfer rate spectrum broadens, with reduced rates at small donor-acceptor energy gaps and enhanced rates at large gaps. We then employ our scheme to study local-temperature effects in a two-mode vibrationally assisted exciton transfer system, where we observe thermally activated interference pathways for excitation transfer.

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Phys. Rev. Lett. 137, 050604– Published 30 July, 2026
  • Received 19 November 2025
  • Revised 6 February 2026
  • Accepted 10 July 2026
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