TY - JOUR T1 - Temperature driven structural phase transition for trapped ions and its experimental detection JF - Physical Review Letters Y1 - 2010 A1 - Zhe-Xuan Gong A1 - G. -D. Lin A1 - L. -M. Duan AB - A Wigner crystal formed with trapped ion can undergo structural phase transition, which is determined only by the mechanical conditions on a classical level. Instead of this classical result, we show that through consideration of quantum and thermal fluctuation, a structural phase transition can be solely driven by change of the system's temperature. We determine a finite-temperature phase diagram for trapped ions using the renormalization group method and the path integral formalism, and propose an experimental scheme to observe the predicted temperature-driven structural phase transition, which is well within the reach of the current ion trap technology. VL - 105 UR - http://arxiv.org/abs/1009.0089v1 CP - 26 J1 - Phys. Rev. Lett. U5 - 10.1103/PhysRevLett.105.265703 ER -