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Trapping electrons in a room-temperature quadrupole trap

Clemens Matthiesen, Qian Yu, Jinen Guo, A. Alonso, Hartmut Häffner

Published May 14, 2020• 0 citations
OpenAlex

Abstract

We demonstrate trapping of electrons in a millimeter-sized quadrupole Paul trap driven at 1.6 GHz in a room-temperature ultra-high vacuum setup. Cold electrons are introduced into the trap by ionization of atomic calcium via Rydberg states and stay confined by microwave and static electric fields for several tens of milliseconds. A fraction of these electrons remains trapped longer and shows no measurable loss for measurement times up to a second. Electronic excitation of the motion reveals secular frequencies from several tens to hundreds of MHz. Operating a similar electron Paul trap in a cryogenic environment may provide a platform for all-electric quantum computing with trapped electron spin qubits.

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We demonstrate trapping of electrons in a millimeter-sized quadrupole Paul trap driven at 1.6 GHz in a room-temperature ultra-high vacuum setup. Cold electrons are introduced into the trap by ionization of atomic calcium via Rydberg states and stay confined by microwave and static electric fields for several tens of milliseconds. A fraction of these electrons remains trapped longer and shows no measurable loss for measurement times up to a second. Electronic excitation of the motion reveals secular frequencies from several tens to hundreds of MHz. Operating a similar electron Paul trap in a cryogenic environment may provide a platform for all-electric quantum computing with trapped electron spin qubits.
We demonstrate trapping of electrons in a millimeter-sized quadrupole Paul trap driven at 1.6 GHz in a room-temperature ultrahigh vacuum setup.Cold electrons are introduced into the trap by ionization of atomic calcium via Rydberg states and stay confined by microwave and static electric fields for several tens of milliseconds.A fraction of these electrons remain trapped longer and show no measurable loss for measurement times up to a second.Electronic excitation of the motion reveals secular frequencies that can be tuned over a range of several tens to hundreds of MHz.Operating a similar electron Paul trap in a cryogenic environment may provide a platform for all-electric quantum computing with trapped electron spin qubits.
We demonstrate trapping of electrons in a millimeter-sized quadrupole Paul trap driven at 1.6 GHz in a room-temperature ultrahigh vacuum setup. Cold electrons are introduced into the trap by ionization of atomic calcium via Rydberg states and stay confined by microwave and static electric fields for several tens of milliseconds. A fraction of these electrons remain trapped longer and show no measurable loss for measurement times up to a second. Electronic excitation of the motion reveals secular frequencies that can be tuned over a range of several tens to hundreds of MHz. Operating a similar electron Paul trap in a cryogenic environment may provide a platform for all-electric quantum computing with trapped electron spin qubits.3 MoreReceived 13 May 2020Revised 11 December 2020Accepted 17 December 2020DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevX.11.011019Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI.Published by the American Physical SocietyPhysics Subject Headings (PhySH)Research AreasElectron beams & opticsElectronic excitation & ionizationQuantum information architectures & platformsQuantum information with trapped ionsPhysical SystemsTrapped ionsTechniquesAtom & ion trapping & guidingQuantum InformationAtomic, Molecular & Optical
We demonstrate the operation of a dual-frequency Paul trap and characterize its performance by storing either electrons or calcium ions while applying two quadrupole fields simultaneously which oscillate at Ωfast=2π×1.6Ω_\textrm{fast} = 2π\times 1.6Ωfast​=2π×1.6 GHz and Ωslow=2π×2Ω_\textrm{slow} = 2π\times 2Ωslow​=2π×2 MHz. The particles are loaded and stored in the trap under various conditions followed by detection employing an electron multiplier tube. We find that tens of electrons or ions can be trapped for up to ten milliseconds and a small fraction remains trapped even after hundreds of milliseconds. During dual-frequency operation we find that while the number of trapped electrons rapidly decreases with increase of the ΩslowΩ_\textrm{slow}Ωslow​ field amplitude, the number of trapped ions shows no dependence on the ΩfastΩ_\textrm{fast}Ωfast​ field amplitude as supported by our extensive numerical simulations. We aim to use a similar trap for synthesising antihydrogen from antiprotons and positrons. Accordingly, we discuss open challenges such as the co-trapping of oppositely charged species and particle trap duration.
We report the image current detection of electrons in a room-temperature Paul trap at microwave frequencies. By selectively leveraging distinct cavity modes for trapping and detection, our approach effectively extracts electron signals otherwise buried in the microwave drive used for pseudo-potential formation. When the trapped electrons resonate with the cavity mode, we observe a mode excitation and its exponential decay attributed to resistive cooling. Detuning electrons from the cavity resonance halts this decay, and sweeping electrons' secular frequency reveals their oscillatory spectrum. Implementing this experiment at cryogenic temperatures could enable the image current detection and ground-state cooling of a single electron in Paul traps.
Combining the strong and long-range interaction of cold Rydberg atoms with the controllability of trapped ions, ultracold trapped Rydberg ions provide a promising platform for scalable quantum computing. We demonstrate how microwave-dressed Rydberg states result in rotating permanent dipole moments causing strong dipole-dipole interaction between ions in highly excited Rydberg states. Due to the large difference in time scales, the fast electronic dynamics of the Rydberg ions decouple from the slower oscillator modes in the linear Coulomb crystal. These properties allow us to realize a submicrosecond two-qubit gate between two Rydberg ions confined in a Paul trap reaching fidelities of > 99% under consideration of the finite lifetime of the Rydberg states at room temperature.
We report a 3D-printed microwave-resonator Paul trap that operates at the GHz frequencies required for electron confinement while preserving an open geometry suitable for laser access and imaging ion Coulomb crystals. The resonator exhibits moderate quality factors of approximately 1000, enabling large confining electric-field amplitudes at low input power, and is in good agreement with finite-element-method (FEM) predictions despite manufacturing imperfections, which we experimentally characterize. The validated FEM model is then used to calculate the electromagnetic fields in the trapping region. These field distributions, together with surface-roughness measurements, are incorporated into a model of electron spin-qubit decoherence to estimate the coherence time. Our analysis predicts that electron spin-qubit coherence times on the order of 10 ms should be achievable under the assumption that motional heating is dominated by Johnson noise, making such systems relevant for quantum information processing. The method of obtaining the coherence time is applicable to any electron Paul trap.