Arbitrary atomic Bell states with two trapped ions are generated in a deterministic and preprogrammed way. The resulting entanglement is quantitatively analyzed using various measures of entanglement. For this, we reconstruct the density matrix using single qubit rotations and subsequent measurements with near-unity detection efficiency. This procedure represents the basic building block for future process tomography of quantum computations.

We report the deterministic creation of maximally entangled three-qubit states—specifically the Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger (GHZ) state and the W state—with a trapped-ion quantum computer.