Observation of anomalous heat transport in a trapped ion chain

Energy transport in low-dimensional systems or systems with long-range interactions shows unusual properties not observed in conventional three-dimensional materials. Trapped linear ion chains have been proposed as an ideal platform to study such phenomena, but many predicted features have not been demonstrated yet and the existing experiments mainly focus on the weak excitation limit where the dynamics can be described by linearized phonon modes. Here, we study the energy transport in a chain of ${}^{174}\mathrm{Yb}^{+}$ ions using a focused heating laser beam. Nontrivial effects are observed such as a nonmonotonic energy distribution with reflection symmetry, oscillatory heating dynamics, and a change in the heating pattern due to the competition between the external driving and interion coupling. Our work deepens the understanding about transport in low-dimensional systems and also provides guidelines for the sympathetic cooling of long ion chains, with applications in quantum information processing and precision measurement.