Blockade of phonon hopping in trapped ions in the presence of multiple local phonons

Abstract: Driving an ion at a motional sideband transition induces the Jaynes--Cummings (JC) interaction. This JC interaction creates an anharmonic ladder of JC eigenstates, resulting in the suppression of phonon hopping due to energy conservation. Here, we realize phonon blockade in the presence of multiple local phonons in a trapped-ion chain. Our work establishes a key technological component for quantum simulation with multiple bosonic particles, which can simulate classically intractable problems.