Quantum Reservoir Engineering
  We show how to design different couplings between a single ion trapped in a harmonic potential and an environment. This will provide the basis for the experimental study of the process of decoherence in a quantum system. The coupling is due to the absorption of a laser photon and subsequent spontaneous emission. The variation of the laser frequencies and intensities allows one to ``engineer'' the coupling and select the master equation describing the motion of the ion. 
J.F. Poyatos (1), J. I. Cirac (1), P. Zoller (2) ((1) Dep. Fisica   Aplicada, Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha, Spain, (2) ...