Anomalous quantum correlations in the motion of a trapped ion

Abstract In a previous paper (Krumm and Vogel 2018 Phys. Rev. A 97 043806) we presented a method to solve the nonlinear Jaynes–Cummings dynamics, describing the quantized motion of a trapped ion exactly, including detuning. Here we investigate this model with respect to nonclassical effects, such as squeezing and sub-Poisson statistics. We show that for the versatile model under study there exist quantum phenomena beyond squeezing and sub-Poisson statistics, such as anomalous quantum correlations of two non-commuting observables. In particular, it is shown that for the excitation of the zeroth sideband neither squeezing nor sub-Poisson statistics occur, but anomalous correlations can be verified. Furthermore, it is shown how these anomalous correlation functions can be derived from measured data.