Transport of trapped-ion qubits within a scalable quantum processor

Chao Fang, Stephen Crain, James A. Joseph +3 more

R. B. Blakestad, C. Ospelkaus, Aaron P. VanDevender +4 more

Trapped-ion qubits can be transported through a two-dimensional trap array, while maintaining the ions near the motional ground-state. This helps demonstrate the viability of large-scale quantum processor architectures using trapped-ions.

Stefanie Castillo

[Background] The industrial usefulness of a quantum processor is correlated with its scalability; thus, one of the main focuses of current industrial and academic efforts is to upscale this machine. For trapped-ion quantum processors, some of the most promising scalable architectures require ion transport across surface-segmented traps. Published solutions for the control of ion transport have been mostly developed as bulky, rack-based embedded systems, placed at room temperature outside the vacuum/cryostat chambers, with cables fed in, and with voltages time-multiplexed or broadcast to reach the electrodes of the trap in order to apply the fixed pre-computed raw voltage sets for each fabricated ion trap, where the voltages are tailored to its time- and setup-dependent deposited impurities condition; all of which is neither scalable nor optimally efficient. [Objective] To address this gap, this study proposes a DiQuNET scalable integrated microelectronics solution for ion-transport control. [Methods]We describe the system-level integration strategy and a full engineering development cycle of the device. [Results] This work presents the conception (specification and design) of the ion-transport integrated circuit and the realization (implementation and evaluation) of a proof of concept (TRL 3), which also constitutes a proof of principle of the first DiQuNET compliant integrated circuit. [Conclusion] These results verify and validate the design of an efficient, architecture-scalable, trainable, automated, parametric, and re-configurable proof of concept of the ion-transport integrated circuit. These results support the feasibility, efficiency, and viability potential of the DiQuNET paradigm that uses a distributed set ofautomatamachines to control a quantum processor.

Anabel Ovide, Andreu Angles-Castillo, Carmen G. Almudever

Trapped-ion Quantum Charge-Coupled Device (QCCD) architectures promise scalability through interconnected trap zones and dynamic ion transport; however, this transport capability creates a complex compilation challenge: how to move qubits efficiently without degrading fidelity. We introduce a routing strategy that turns this challenge into an advantage by exploiting operational parallelism across traps while adapting to both algorithmic structure and device topology through a configurable multi-parameter scoring mechanism. Across a broad suite of benchmarks and QCCD layouts, the method consistently reduces ion-transport overhead and improves execution fidelity, outperforming state-of-the-art routing techniques. These results highlight that explicitly balancing movement overhead and execution parallelism under architectural constraints is key to unlocking the full potential of modular trapped-ion quantum processors.

Sahra A. Kulmiya

Jonathan Home, David Hanneke, John D. Jost +3 more

Large-scale quantum information processors must be able to transport and maintain quantum information and repeatedly perform logical operations. Here, we show a combination of all of the fundamental elements required to perform scalable quantum computing through the use of qubits stored in the internal states of trapped atomic ions. We quantified the repeatability of a multiple-qubit operation and observed no loss of performance despite qubit transport over macroscopic distances. Key to these results is the use of different pairs of 9Be+ hyperfine states for robust qubit storage, readout, and gates, and simultaneous trapping of 24Mg+ "re-cooling" ions along with the qubit ions.