This is the continuation of a series of lectures on quantum information. Having presented the principles of this physics in previous years, and described electrodynamic cavity experiments that simply illustrate them, we now turn to an analysis of recent entanglement and quantum bit manipulation experiments carried out in other fields of quantum optics. This year's lecture was mainly devoted to the description of trapped ion experiments.
Starting in 2005-2006, we will be studying other systems using ionized or neutral atoms as quantum bits, confined in traps at very low temperatures. This year's lecture, devoted to trapped ions, presented, along with the general principles of this physics, recent experiments carried out in two research groups, Rainer Blatt's at the University of Innsbruck (Austria) and David Wineland's at the NIST laboratory in Boulder (Colorado).