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arXiv:1602.02840 · npj Quantum Information

Co-designing a scalable quantum computer with trapped atomic ions

Kenneth R. Brown, Jungsang Kim, Christopher R. Monroe

Published Nov 7, 2016• 249 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Abstract The first generation of quantum computers are on the horizon, fabricated from quantum hardware platforms that may soon be able to tackle certain tasks that cannot be performed or modelled with conventional computers. These quantum devices will not likely be universal or fully programmable, but special-purpose processors whose hardware will be tightly co-designed with particular target applications. Trapped atomic ions are a leading platform for first-generation quantum computers, but they are also fundamentally scalable to more powerful general purpose devices in future generations. This is because trapped ion qubits are atomic clock standards that can be made identical to a part in 1015, and their quantum circuit connectivity can be reconfigured through the use of external fields, without modifying the arrangement or architecture of the qubits themselves. In this forward-looking overview, we show how a modular quantum computer with thousands or more qubits can be engineered from ion crystals, and how the linkage between ion trap qubits might be tailored to a variety of applications and quantum-computing protocols.

DOI
10.1038/npjqi.2016.34

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Abstract The first generation of quantum computers are on the horizon, fabricated from quantum hardware platforms that may soon be able to tackle certain tasks that cannot be performed or modelled with conventional computers. These quantum devices will not likely be universal or fully programmable, but special-purpose processors whose hardware will be tightly co-designed with particular target applications. Trapped atomic ions are a leading platform for first-generation quantum computers, but they are also fundamentally scalable to more powerful general purpose devices in future generations. This is because trapped ion qubits are atomic clock standards that can be made identical to a part in 1015, and their quantum circuit connectivity can be reconfigured through the use of external fields, without modifying the arrangement or architecture of the qubits themselves. In this forward-looking overview, we show how a modular quantum computer with thousands or more qubits can be engineered from ion crystals, and how the linkage between ion trap qubits might be tailored to a variety of applications and quantum-computing protocols.
We present progress on the construction and operation of a room- temperature quantum computer built with trapped atomic ion qubits. Based on the technological underpinnings of atomic clocks that define time, atomic qubits are standards of quantum information because they are all identical. They present a fundamentally scalable approach to quantum computation where interactions can be faithfully replicated and measured with near-perfect efficiency. Moreover, the connection among atomic ion qubits are forged from external laser beams and mediated by the Coulomb repulsion between them, and hence behave as a fully reconfigurable quantum circuit, much like an FPGA in classical computation. We further discuss paths to scaling using demonstrated technologies that are unique to this class of quantum computation devices. This flexibility will likely allow ion trap quantum computers to express the superset of all known quantum computation operations, and thus efficiently target any type of application that arises.
The trapped-ion QCCD (quantum charge-coupled device) architecture proposal lays out a blueprint for a universal quantum computer. The design begins with electrodes patterned on a two-dimensional surface configured to trap multiple arrays of ions (or ion crystals). Communication within the ion crystal network allows for the machine to be scaled while keeping the number of ions in each crystal to a small number, thereby preserving the low error rates demonstrated in trapped-ion experiments. By proposing to communicate quantum information by moving the ions through space to interact with other distant ions, the architecture creates a quantum computer endowed with full-connectivity. However, engineering this fully-connected computer introduces a host of difficulties that have precluded the architecture from being fully realized in the twenty years since its proposal. Using a Honeywell cryogenic surface trap, we report on the integration of all necessary ingredients of the QCCD architecture into a programmable trapped-ion quantum computer. Using four and six qubit circuits, the system level performance of the processor is quantified by the fidelity of a teleported CNOT gate utilizing mid-circuit measurement and a quantum volume measurement of 26=642^6=6426=64. By demonstrating that the low error rates achievable in small ion crystals can be successfully integrated with a scalable trap design, parallel optical delivery, and fast ion transport, the QCCD architecture is shown to be a viable path toward large quantum computers. Atomic ions provide perfectly identical, high-fidelity qubits. Our work shows that the QCCD architecture built around these qubits will provide high performance quantum computers, likely enabling important near-term demonstrations such as quantum error correction and quantum advantage.
Quantum computers can solve certain problems more efficiently compared to conventional classical methods. In the endeavor to build a quantum computer, several competing platforms have emerged that can implement certain quantum algorithms using a few qubits. However, the demonstrations so far have been done usually by tailoring the hardware to meet the requirements of a particular algorithm implemented for a limited number of instances. Although such proof of principal implementations are important to verify the working of algorithms on a physical system, they further need to have the potential to serve as a general purpose quantum computer allowing the flexibility required for running multiple algorithms and be scaled up to host more qubits. Here we demonstrate a small programmable quantum computer based on five trapped atomic ions each of which serves as a qubit. By optically resolving each ion we can individually address them in order to perform a complete set of single-qubit and fully connected two-qubit quantum gates and alsoperform efficient individual qubit measurements. We implement a computation architecture that accepts an algorithm from a user interface in the form of a standard logic gate sequence and decomposes it into fundamental quantum operations that are native to the hardware using a set of compilation instructions that are defined within the software. These operations are then effected through a pattern of laser pulses that perform coherent rotations on targeted qubits in the chain. The architecture implemented in the experiment therefore gives us unprecedented flexibility in the programming of any quantum algorithm while staying blind to the underlying hardware. As a demonstration we implement the Deutsch-Jozsa and Bernstein-Vazirani algorithms on the five-qubit processor and achieve average success rates of 95 and 90 percent, respectively. We also implement a five-qubit coherent quantum Fourier transform and examine its performance in the period finding and phase estimation protocol. We find fidelities of 84 and 62 percent, respectively. While maintaining the same computation architecture the system can be scaled to more ions using resources that scale favorably (O(N^2)) with the number of qubits N.
This is the second paper in a series of papers providing an overview of different quantum computing hardware platforms from an industrial end-user perspective. It follows our first paper on neutral-atom quantum computing. In the present paper, we provide a survey on the current state-of-the-art in trapped-ion quantum computing, taking up again the perspective of an industrial end-user. To this end, our paper covers, on the one hand, a comprehensive introduction to the physical foundations and mechanisms that play an important role in operating a trapped-ion quantum computer. On the other hand, we provide an overview of the key performance metrics that best describe and characterise such a device's current computing capability. These metrics encompass performance indicators such as qubit numbers, gate times and errors, native gate sets, qubit stability and scalability as well as considerations regarding the general qubit types and trap architectures. In order to ensure that these metrics reflect the current state of trapped-ion quantum computing as accurate as possible, they have been obtained by both an extensive review of recent literature and, more importantly, from discussions with various quantum hardware vendors in the field. We combine these factors and provide - again from an industrial end-user perspective - an overview of what is currently possible with trapped-ion quantum computers, which algorithms and problems are especially suitable for this platform, what are the relevant end-to-end wall clock times for calculations, and what might be possible with future fault-tolerant trapped-ion quantum computers.
Summary form only given. Last year saw the first quantum computers realized that can be programmed from a high level user interface to run arbitrary quantum algorithms [1, 2]. While these devices are still small in scale, only comprising a handful of qubits each, they nevertheless allow the implementation of quantum circuits in a way that is basically blind to the underlying hardware itself. This constitutes a new level of development in quantum computer technology for the two leading approaches, trapped atomic ions [1] and superconducting circuits [3]. It also gives us the opportunity to test quantum computers irrespective of their particular physical implementation for the first time. With multiple companies (IBM, Google, Microsoft, as well as several start-ups) aiming for a larger scale device of commercial viability in the near future, benchmarking quantum computers becomes a crucial pursuit and this work is a step in that direction. Our device consists of five171Yb+atomic ions trapped in a Paul trap [1]. Each provides a pristine “atomic clock” qubit in its atomic structure that can be manipulated with laser light and read out via state-dependent fluorescence. Two-qubit gates between any pair are implemented via laser-mediated interaction of qubits through the normal modes of motion in the trap [4] making it a fully connected system.
The basic requirements for quantum computing and quantum simulation (single‐ and multi‐qubit gates, long memory times, etc.) have been demonstrated in separate experiments on trapped ions. Construction of a large‐scale information processor will require synthesis of these elements and implementation of high‐fidelity operations on a very large number of qubits. This is still well in the future. NIST and other groups are addressing part of the scaling issue by trying to fabricate multi‐zone arrays of traps that would allow highly‐parallel and scalable processing. In the near term, some simple quantum processing protocols are being used to aid in quantum metrology, such as in atomic clocks. As the number of qubits increases, Schrödinger’s cat paradox and the measurement problem in quantum mechanics become more apparent; with luck, trapped ion systems might be able to shed light on these fundamental issues.