The advantages of trapped-ion quantum computation

Stefano Olivares

Clayton L. Craft, Paul M. Alsing, Nicholas J. Barton +20 more

Quantum computing (QC) is theorized to solve certain important problems much faster than classical computers. The current state of QC, the noisy intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) era, is limited in the scope of problems it can solve, largely due to the quantity of reliable qubits available to universal quantum operations. And while all available quantum computing systems have their advantages, ion-based systems have been shown to be a reliable option with low infidelity and a capability for universal gating procedure. These advantages are dependent on achieving low crosstalk when addressing ions, a vital challenge for this QC system, particularly when using only bulk optic systems. Here we show a microfabricated planar waveguide which can selectively interact in free space with 8 trapped Ba+ ions. This performance meets or exceeds that of similar waveguides couple to trapped ion systems and shows a reliable method to selectively interact with ions bound by a Paul Trap using imaged waveguide outputs.

Hartmut Häffner, W. Hänsel, Christian F. Roos +11 more

Xin-Qi Li, Li-Xiang Cen, Guoxiang Huang +2 more

We propose a nonadiabatic scheme for geometric quantum computation with trapped ions. By making use of the Aharonov-Anandan phase, the proposed scheme not only preserves the globally geometric nature in quantum computation, but also provides the advantage of nonadiabaticity that overcomes the problem of slow evolution in the existing adiabatic schemes. Moreover, the present scheme requires only two atomic levels in each ion, making it an appealing candidate for quantum computation.

Jürgen Eschner

Góis, Francisca, Marco Pezzutto, Yasser Omar

The question of the energetic efficiency of quantum computers has gained increasing attention recently. A precise understanding of the resources required to operate a quantum computer with a targeted computational performance and how the energy requirements can impact the scalability is still missing. In this work, one implementation of the quantum Fourier transform algorithm in a trapped-ion setup was studied. The main focus was to obtain a theoretical characterization of the energetic costs of quantum computation, based on actual experimental measurements performed on a similar trapped-ion setup.The energetic cost of the computation was estimated by analyzing the components of the setup and all the steps involved, from the cooling and preparation of the ions to the execution of the algorithm and readout of the result. In the Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum regime, a potential scaling of the energetic costs was argued and used to find a possible threshold for an energetic quantum advantage against state-of-the-art classical supercomputers. Remarkably, this threshold appears to be lower than the one for which computational time advantage is expected.