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arXiv:2412.07363 · Journal of Applied Physics

Development of a bipolar 50 V output digital-to-analog converter system for ion-shuttling operations

T. Oshio, R. Nishimoto, Takashi Higuchi, K. Hayasaka, Keisuke Koike, Shinichi Morisaka, T. Miyoshi, Ryutaro Ohira, U. Tanaka

Published Apr 9, 2025• 4 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

The quantum charge-coupled device (QCCD) is one of the notable architectures to achieve large-scale trapped-ion quantum computers. To realize QCCD architecture, ions must be transported quickly while minimizing motional excitation. High-voltage sources are necessary to achieve such high-quality ion transport through a high secular frequency. In this study, we report the development of a field programmable gate array-based digital-to-analog converter (DAC) system with an output voltage range of ±50 V and demonstrate its effectiveness in ion transport operations. The device provides a 16-channel analog output, a maximum update rate of 16 mega updates per second, a slew rate of 20 V/μs, and a bandwidth of >200 kHz. By optimizing the voltage sets with quadratic programming, we experimentally confirmed that this DAC system can achieve more than twice the secular frequency attainable when its output range is restricted to ±10 V, which is consistent with the fact that scaling all electrode voltages by a factor of 5 will scale the secular frequency by 5. Since the output range of many commercially available DACs is commonly limited to ±10 V, this increase is effective for ion-shuttling operations, such as transport, split, and merge. The developed DAC system has the potential to increase the speed of ion transport thereby reducing processing times in QCCD-based quantum computers.

DOI
10.1063/5.0252358

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•Jan 1, 2021•87 citations
The quantum charge-coupled device (QCCD) is one of the notable architectures to achieve large-scale trapped-ion quantum computers. To realize QCCD architecture, ions must be transported quickly while minimizing motional excitation. High-voltage sources are necessary to achieve such high-quality ion transport through a high secular frequency. In this study, we report the development of a field programmable gate array-based digital-to-analog converter (DAC) system with an output voltage range of ±50 V and demonstrate its effectiveness in ion transport operations. The device provides a 16-channel analog output, a maximum update rate of 16 mega updates per second, a slew rate of 20 V/μs, and a bandwidth of >200 kHz. By optimizing the voltage sets with quadratic programming, we experimentally confirmed that this DAC system can achieve more than twice the secular frequency attainable when its output range is restricted to ±10 V, which is consistent with the fact that scaling all electrode voltages by a factor of 5 will scale the secular frequency by 5. Since the output range of many commercially available DACs is commonly limited to ±10 V, this increase is effective for ion-shuttling operations, such as transport, split, and merge. The developed DAC system has the potential to increase the speed of ion transport thereby reducing processing times in QCCD-based quantum computers.
The scaling up of trapped-ion quantum processors based on the quantum charge-coupled device (QCCD) architecture is difficult owing to the extensive electronics and high-density wiring required to control numerous trap electrodes. In conventional QCCD architectures, each trap electrode is controlled via a dedicated digital-to-analog converter (DAC). The conventional approach places an overwhelming demand on electronic resources and wiring complexity. This is because the number of trap electrodes typically exceeds the number of trapped-ion qubits. This study proposes a method that leverages a high-speed DAC to generate time-division multiplexed signals to control a large-scale QCCD trapped-ion quantum processor. The proposed method replaces conventional DACs with a single high-speed DAC that generates the complete voltage waveforms required to control the trap electrodes, thereby significantly reducing the wiring complexity and overall resource requirements. Based on realistic parameters and commercially available electronics, our analysis demonstrates that a QCCD trapped-ion quantum computer with10,000\mathbf{1 0, 0 0 0}10,000trap electrodes can be controlled using only 13 field-programmable gate arrays and 104 high-speed DACs. This is in stark contrast to the10,000\mathbf{1 0, 0 0 0}10,000dedicated DACs required by conventional control methods. Consequently, employing this approach, we developed a proof-of-concept electronic system and evaluated its analog output performance.
Independent control of numerous electrodes in quantum charge-coupled device architectures presents a significant challenge for wiring and hardware scalability. To address this issue, we demonstrate a voltage control method based on time-division multiplexing (TDM). This approach utilizes a single high-update-rate digital-to-analog converter (DAC) to sequentially generate control signals for multiple electrodes, thereby reducing both the number of required DACs and associated wiring. We experimentally validate this concept by developing a 10-channel system that operates with only two DACs. The developed TDM-based voltage control system is applied to a surface electrode trap, where we successfully trap a single 40Ca+ ion and demonstrate a simple ion transport primitive. This approach offers a resource-efficient and scalable solution for advanced quantum computing systems based on trapped ions.
Trapped-ion quantum computers exhibit promising potential to provide platforms for high-quality qubits and reliable quantum computation. The quantum charge coupled device (QCCD) architecture is a leading example that offers a modular solution to enable the realization of scalable quantum computers, paving the way for practical quantum algorithms with large qubit numbers. Within these devices, ions can be shuttled (moved) throughout the trap and through different dedicated zones, e.g., a memory zone for storage and a processing zone for the actual computation. However, due to decoherence of the ions’ quantum states, the qubits lose their quantum information over time. Thus, the required time steps of shuttling operations should be minimized. In this work,1 we propose a heuristic approach to determining an efficient shuttling schedule, which orchestrates the movement operations within the device. Given a quantum algorithm and a device architecture, the proposed approach produces shuttling schedules with a close-to-minimal amount of time steps for small-size QCCD architectures. For large-scale QCCD devices, empirical evaluations show promising results with respect to quality of the solution as well as performance. An implementation of the proposed approach is publicly available as part of the open-source Munich Quantum Toolkit (MQT) athttps://github.com/cda-tum/mqt-ion-shuttler.
Trapped-ion quantum computers based on the quantum charge-coupled device architecture require on the order of ten trap electrodes per qubit, making the number of vacuum feedthroughs a bottleneck at the system scale. Time-division multiplexed (TDM)-based voltage control for trap electrodes provides a natural route to alleviate this constraint. However, previous studies have been limited to architectural proposals for static trap-potential compensation and room-temperature demonstrations of dynamic-electrode control, leaving cryogenic operation of TDM-based voltage control for static and dynamic electrodes experimentally unexplored. In this study, we develop and cryogenically validate TDM-based voltage control schemes for two distinct electrode classes. For static electrodes used in trap-potential compensation, we implement a 32-channel demultiplexed system operating at approximately 27~K, achieving an effective voltage update rate of 37.5~kHz with an output range of ±10 V\pm10~\mathrm{V}±10 V per channel. For dynamic electrodes used in ion operations, such as shuttling, we implement a four-channel demultiplexed system operating at approximately 14~K, achieving an effective voltage update rate of 1~MHz with a comparable output range. These results establish TDM-based voltage control as a practical approach for both electrode classes, providing a path for mitigating the vacuum feedthrough bottleneck in scalable trapped-ion quantum processors.
Abstract Shuttling ions at high speed and with low motional excitation is essential for realizing fast and high-fidelity algorithms in many trapped-ion-based quantum computing architectures. Achieving such performance is challenging due to the sensitivity of an ion to electric fields and the unknown and imperfect environmental and control variables that create them. Here we implement a closed-loop optimization of the voltage waveforms that control the trajectory and axial frequency of an ion during transport in order to minimize the final motional excitation. The resulting waveforms realize fast round-trip transport of a trapped ion across multiple electrodes at speeds of 0.5 electrodes per microsecond (35 m·s −1 for a one-way transport of 210 μm in 6 μs) with a maximum of 0.36 ± 0.08 mean quanta gain. This sub-quanta gain is independent of the phase of the secular motion at the distal location, obviating the need for an electric field impulse or time delay to eliminate the coherent motion.
Abstract The trapped-ion quantum charge-coupled device (QCCD) proposal1, 2 lays out a blueprint for a universal quantum computer that uses mobile ions as qubits. Analogous to a charge-coupled device (CCD) camera, which stores and processes imaging information as movable electrical charges in coupled pixels, a QCCD computer stores quantum information in the internal state of electrically charged ions that are transported between different processing zones using dynamic electric fields. The promise of the QCCD architecture is to maintain the low error rates demonstrated in small trapped-ion experiments3–5 by limiting the quantum interactions to multiple small ion crystals, then physically splitting and rearranging the constituent ions of these crystals into new crystals, where further interactions occur. This approach leverages transport timescales that are fast relative to the coherence times of the qubits, the insensitivity of the qubit states of the ion to the electric fields used for transport, and the low crosstalk afforded by spatially separated crystals. However, engineering a machine capable of executing these operations across multiple interaction zones with low error introduces many difficulties, which have slowed progress in scaling this architecture to larger qubit numbers. Here we use a cryogenic surface trap to integrate all necessary elements of the QCCD architecture—a scalable trap design, parallel interaction zones and fast ion transport—into a programmable trapped-ion quantum computer that has a system performance consistent with the low error rates achieved in the individual ion crystals. We apply this approach to realize a teleported CNOT gate using mid-circuit measurement6, negligible crosstalk error and a quantum volume7 of 26 = 64. These results demonstrate that the QCCD architecture provides a viable path towards high-performance quantum computers.