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Fortschritte der Physik

Experimental Primer on the Trapped Ion Quantum Computer

D. J. Wineland, Christopher R. Monroe, W. M. Itano, B. E. King, D. Leibfried, D. M. Meekhof, Christopher J. Myatt, C. S. Wood

Published Jun 1, 1998• 74 citations
Publisher

Abstract

The development of a quantum computer based on a system of trapped atomic ions is described, following the proposal of Cirac and Zoller. Initial results on a two-bit quantum logic gate are presented, and select experimental issues in scaling the system to larger numbers of ions and gates are treated.
DOI
10.1002/(sici)1521-3978(199806)46:4/5<363::aid-prop363>3.0.co;2-4

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Methods for, and limitations to, the generation of entangled states of trapped atomic ions are examined. As much as possible, state manipulations are described in terms of quantum logic operations since the conditional dynamics implicit in quantum logic is central to the creation of entanglement. Keeping with current interest, some experimental issues in the proposal for trappedion quantum computation by J. I. Cirac and P. Zoller (University of Innsbruck) are discussed. Several possible decoherence mechanisms are examined and what may be the more important of these are identified. Some potential applications for entangled states of trapped-ions which lie outside the immediate realm of quantum computation are also discussed.
In this paper we describe one of the most promising platforms for the construction of a universal quantum computer, which consists of a chain of NNN ions trapped in a harmonic potential, whose internal states work out as qubits, and are coupled to collective vibrational modes of the chain. From such coupling, it is possible to build interactions between different ions of the chain, that is, qubit-qubit interactions that, together with individual operations on the ions, allow building a quantum computer as first proposed by Cirac and Zoller in the 1990s [Phys. Rev. Lett. 74, 4091 (1995)]. Here we discuss from the physics involved in trapping ions in electromagnetic potentials to the Hamiltonian engineering needed to generate a universal set of logic gates, fundamental for the execution of more complex quantum algorithms. Finally, we present the current state of the art of quantum computing in trapped ion systems, highlighting recent advances made by companies and government projects that use such architecture, such as IonQ and AQTION.
The purpose of this article is to review two complementary schemes for quantum computation with trapped ions. We initially discuss the first proposal of quantum computations with cold trapped ions (J. I. Cirac and P. Zoller; Phys. Rev. Lett. 74, 4091, 1995) which requires, prior to any computation, laser cooling to the motional ground state. This proposal is closely related to the physics of generating and manipulating N-particles entangled states in both ion traps and high-Q cavities (cavity quantum electrodynamics). The second scheme is that of quantum computations with hot trapped ions (J.F. Poyatos, J.I. Cirac and P. Zoller; Phys. Rev. Lett. 81, 1322, 1998) which works at finite temperature and resembles physical ideas found in atom interferometry.