We present a proposal for protecting states against decoherence, based on the engineering of pointer states. We apply this procedure to the vibrational motion of a trapped ion, and show how to protect qubits, squeezed states, approximate phase eigenstates, and superpositions of coherent states.

• Received 4 September 2000

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.86.4988