Abstract

Recently an electron in a Penning trap has drawn the attention as a potential candidate for quantum logic operations [1]. This claim is based on the very low decoherence and on the experimental accuracy achieved so far. Just to mention a few facts, this system has been designed to perform the most precise measurement of the electron g factor and other fundamental constants. Radiative damping is negligible, also because of cavity effects which prevent emission of synchrotron radiation [2]. Moreover, transitions induced by blackbody radiation becomes extremely unlikely below 1 K [2]. All this, very recently, has lead to the nondestructive observation of Fock states for the cyclotron motion [2].

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