Directional Motional Control via Engineered Conical Intersections in Trapped Rydberg Ions

Abstract: We demonstrate coherent control of motional dynamics in trapped Rydberg ions engineered to exhibit a conical intersection between adiabatic potential-energy surfaces. Using quantum optimal control, an optimally shaped electric field drives the motional wave packet between prescribed spatial configurations on microsecond timescales. Localized nonadiabatic coupling breaks the symmetry of the dynamics and produces a directed trajectory: after only a few early passages through the conical intersection region, the packet proceeds toward the target with high fidelity. In contrast, in the Born-Oppenheimer limit, where such coupling is absent, the optimized control yields symmetric, multi-cycle oscillations rather than a comparably directed displacement. While both approaches reach the target at the chosen final time, the underlying trajectories are qualitatively different. This work demonstrates that engineered conical intersections can serve as a new control resource for directional motional dynamics, complementing pulse-shaping methods in trapped-ion systems. This directional motion of the ions, enabled by the conical intersection, is expected to have important applications for quantum information processing, where controlled motional states underpin high-fidelity gate operations and scalable architectures.