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arXiv:1310.4385 · Physical Review A

Insensitivity of the rate of ion motional heating to trap-electrode material over a large temperature range

John Chiaverini, Jeremy Sage

Published Jan 16, 2014• 72 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

We present measurements of trapped-ion motional-state heating rates in niobium and gold surface-electrode ion traps over a range of trap-electrode temperatures from approximately 4 K to room temperature (295 K) in a single apparatus.Using the sideband-ratio technique after resolved-sideband cooling of single ions to the motional ground state, we find low-temperature heating rates more than two orders of magnitude below the room-temperature values and approximately equal to the lowest measured heating rates in similarly sized cryogenic traps. We find similar behavior in the two very different electrode materials, suggesting that the anomalous heating process is dominated by non-material-specific surface contaminants. Through precise control of the temperature of cryopumping surfaces, we also identify conditions under which elastic collisions with the background gas can lead to an apparent steady heating rate, despite rare collisions.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.89.012318

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We present measurements of trapped-ion motional-state heating rates in niobium and gold surface-electrode ion traps over a range of trap-electrode temperatures from approximately 4 K to room temperature (295 K) in a single apparatus.Using the sideband-ratio technique after resolved-sideband cooling of single ions to the motional ground state, we find low-temperature heating rates more than two orders of magnitude below the room-temperature values and approximately equal to the lowest measured heating rates in similarly sized cryogenic traps. We find similar behavior in the two very different electrode materials, suggesting that the anomalous heating process is dominated by non-material-specific surface contaminants. Through precise control of the temperature of cryopumping surfaces, we also identify conditions under which elastic collisions with the background gas can lead to an apparent steady heating rate, despite rare collisions.
We report heating rate measurements in a microfabricated gold-on-sapphire surface electrode ion trap with a trapping height of approximately 240 μm. Using the Doppler recooling method, we characterize the trap heating rates over an extended region of the trap. The noise spectral density of the trap falls in the range of noise spectra reported in ion traps at room temperature. We find that during the first months of operation, the heating rates increase by approximately one order of magnitude. The increase in heating rates is largest in the ion-loading region of the trap, providing a strong hint that surface contamination plays a major role for excessive heating rates. We discuss data found in the literature and the possible relation of anomalous heating to sources of noise and dissipation in other systems, namely impurity atoms adsorbed onto metal surfaces and amorphous dielectrics.
Dense arrays of trapped ions provide one way of scaling up ion trap quantum information processing. However, miniaturization of ion traps is currently limited by sharply increasing motional state decoherence at sub-100 mum ion-electrode distances. We characterize heating rates in cryogenically cooled surface-electrode traps, with characteristic sizes in the 75 to 150 mum range. Upon cooling to 6 K, the measured rates are suppressed by 7 orders of magnitude, 2 orders of magnitude below previously published data of similarly sized traps operated at room temperature. The observed noise depends strongly on the fabrication process, which suggests further improvements are possible.
Anomalous motional heating is a major obstacle to scalable quantum information processing with trapped ions. Although the source of this heating is not yet understood, several previous studies suggest that noise due to surface contaminants is the limiting heating mechanism in some instances. We demonstrate an improvement by a factor of 4 in the room-temperature heating rate of a niobium surface electrode trap by in situ plasma cleaning of the trap surface. This surface treatment was performed with a simple homebuilt coil assembly and commercially available matching network and is considerably gentler than other treatments, such as ion milling or laser cleaning, that have previously been shown to improve ion heating rates. We do not see an improvement in the heating rate when the trap is operated at cryogenic temperatures, pointing to a role of thermally activated surface contaminants in motional heating whose activity may freeze out at low temperatures.
We measure ion heating following transport throughout a Y\mathsf{Y}Y-junction surface-electrode ion trap. By carefully selecting the trap voltage update rate during adiabatic transport along a trap arm, we observe minimal heating relative to the anomalous heating background. Transport through the junction results in an induced heating between 37 and 150 quanta in the axial direction per traverse. To reliably measure heating in this range, we compare the experimental sideband envelope, including up to fourth-order sidebands, to a theoretical model. The sideband envelope method allows us to cover the intermediate heating range inaccessible to the first-order sideband and Doppler recooling methods. We conclude that quantum information processing in this ion trap will likely require sympathetic cooling in order to support high fidelity gates after junction transport.
We measure and characterize anomalous motional heating of an atomic ion confined in the lowest quantum levels of a novel rf ion trap that features moveable electrodes. The scaling of heating with electrode proximity is measured, and when the electrodes are cooled from 300 to 150 K, the heating rate is suppressed by an order of magnitude. This provides direct evidence that anomalous motional heating of trapped ions stems from microscopic noisy potentials on the electrodes that are thermally driven. These observations are relevant to decoherence in quantum information processing schemes based on trapped ions and perhaps other charge-based quantum systems.
We have measured motional heating rates of trapped atomic ions, a factor that can influence multi-ion quantum logic gate fidelities. Two simplified techniques were developed for this purpose: one relies on Raman sideband detection implemented with a single laser source, while the second is even simpler and is based on time-resolved fluorescence detection during Doppler recooling. We applied these methods to determine heating rates in a microfrabricated surface-electrode trap made of gold on fused quartz, which traps ions $40\phantom{\rule{0.3em}{0ex}}\mathrm{\ensuremath{\mu}}\mathrm{m}$ above its surface. Heating rates obtained from the two techniques were found to be in reasonable agreement. In addition, the trap gives rise to a heating rate of $300\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}30\phantom{\rule{0.3em}{0ex}}{\mathrm{s}}^{\ensuremath{-}1}$ for a motional frequency of 5.25MHz5.25\phantom{\rule{0.3em}{0ex}}\mathrm{MHz}5.25MHz, substantially below the trend observed in other traps.