Testing wave-particle duality with the hot-ion quantum computation

Wave-particle duality refers to quantum mechanical objects behaving as waves or particles under different physical conditions. We propose a scheme for testing the wave-particle duality by means of the hot-ion quantum computation. With an efficient controlled-NOT gate, the 'which-path' information can be obtained with the method of bichromatic field. The appearance and disappearance of interference fringes due to deletion and production of the entanglement between the observed ion and the marker are analyzed, respectively. The scheme can be regarded as both a more efficient hot-ion quantum computation one and an application of quantum computation. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.