Trapped-ion qubits promise certain fundamental advantages for quantum information processing (QIP), owing to their indistinguishability and relatively high isolation from noisy environments. Though these qualities have allowed demonstrations of the necessary primitives for quantum computation, the complexity of the optical apparatus required is a major impediment to implementation at scales where quantum systems offer a clear advantage over classical computers. Here, we build on previous work with trap-integrated waveguide optics, describing designs and simulations for commercial foundry-fabricated ion trap chips with integrated Si3N4 waveguides and grating couplers to implement multi-qubit operations. We detail a design intended to address and implement quantum logic gates between 5 ions in a single register, and a configuration which utilizes the stable on-chip path lengths of waveguide devices to enact a novel fast entangling two-qubit gate. The devices and approaches presented here could form elements of a scalable architecture for trapped-ion QIP.
The major challenges in trapped-ion quantum computation are to scale up few-ion experiments to many qubits and to improve control techniques so that quantum logic gates can be carried out with higher fidelities. This thesis reports experimental progress in both of these areas. In the early part of the thesis we describe the fabrication of a surface-electrode ion trap, the development of the apparatus and techniques required to operate it and the successful trapping of 40Ca+ ions. Notably we developed methods to control the orientation of the principal axes and to minimise ion micromotion. We propose a repumping scheme that simplifies heating rate measurements for ions with low-lying D levels, and use it to characterise the electric field noise in the trap. Surface-electrode traps are important because they offer a route to dense integration of electronic and optical control elements using existing microfabrication technology. We explore this scaling route by testing a series of three traps that were microfabricated at Sandia National Laboratories. Investigations of micromotion and charging of the surface by laser beams were carried out and improvements to future traps are suggested. Using one of these traps we also investigated anomalous electrical noise from the electrode surfaces and discovered that it can be reduced by cleaning with a pulsed laser. A factor of two decrease was observed; this represents the first in situ removal of this noise source, an important step towards higher gate fidelities. In the second half of the thesis we describe the design and construction of an experiment for the purpose of replacing laser-driven multi-qubit quantum logic gates with microwave-driven ones. We investigate magnetic-field-independent hyperfine qubits in 40Ca+ as suitable qubits for this scheme. We make a design study of how best to integrate an ion trap with the microwave conductors required to implement the gate and propose a novel integrated resonant structure. The trap was fabricated and ions were successfully loaded. Single-qubit experiments show that the microwave fields above the trap are in excellent agreement with software simulations. There are good prospects for demonstrating a multi-qubit gate in the near future. We conclude by discussing the possibilities for larger-scale quantum computation by combining microfabricated traps and microwave control.
Abstract We demonstrate key multi-qubit quantum-logic primitives in a dual-species trapped-ion system based on
40 40 Ca
+ + and
88 88 Sr
+ + ions, using two optical qubits with quantum-logic-control frequencies in the red to near-infrared range. With all ionization, cooling, and control wavelengths in a wavelength band similar for the two species and centered in the visible, and with a favorable mass ratio for sympathetic cooling, this pair is a promising candidate for scalable quantum information processing. Same-species and dual-species two-qubit gates, based on the Mølmer–Sørensen interaction and performed in a cryogenic surface-electrode trap, are characterized via the fidelity of generated entangled states; we achieve fidelities of 98.8(2)% and 97.5(2)% in Ca
+ + –Ca
+ + and Sr
+ + –Sr
+ + gates, respectively. For a similar Ca
+ + –Sr
+ + gate, we achieve a fidelity of 94.3(3)%, and carrying out a Sr
+ + –Sr
+ + gate performed with a Ca
+ + sympathetic cooling ion in a Sr
+ + –Ca
+