We present the design and vacuum performance of a compact room-temperature trapped ion system for quantum computing, consisting of an ultra-high vacuum (UHV) package, a micro-fabricated surface trap, and a small form-factor ion pump. The system is designed to maximize mechanical stability and robustness by minimizing the system size and weight. The internal volume of the UHV package is only ≈2 cm3, a significant reduction in comparison with conventional vacuum chambers used in trapped ion experiments. We demonstrate trapping of 174Yb+ ions in this system and characterize the vacuum level in the UHV package by monitoring both the rates of ion hopping in a double-well potential and ion chain reordering events. The calculated pressure in this vacuum package is ≈2.2×1011 Torr, which is sufficient for the majority of current trapped ion experiments.
We demonstrate coupling between the motions of two independently trapped ions with a separation distance of 620 μm. The ion-ion interaction is enhanced via a room-temperature electrically floating metallic wire which connects two surface traps. Tuning the motion of both ions into resonance, we show flow of energy with a coupling rate of 11 Hz. Quantum-coherent coupling is hindered by strong surface electric-field noise in our device. Our ion-wire-ion system demonstrates that room-temperature conductors can be used to mediate and tune interactions between independently trapped charges over distances beyond those achievable with free-space dipole-dipole coupling. This technology may be used to sympathetically cool or entangle remotely trapped charges and enable coupling between disparate physical systems.
We present a room-temperature Extreme High Vacuum (XHV) system engineered to support the long-duration operation of a trapped-ion quantum processor. Background-gas collisions impose limitations on trapped-ion performance and scalability by interrupting algorithmic execution and, in some cases, ejecting ions from the trap. Using molecular-flow simulations, we optimize the chamber geometry, conductance pathways, and pumping configuration to maximize the effective pumping speed at the ion location. We perform high-temperature heat treatment of stainless steel vacuum components to achieve the desired outgassing rate, guided by quantitative relations of bulk diffusive processes, allowing us to reduce the
H2 outgassing load to the
10−15mbarls−1cm−2 level. The final pressure in our chamber, measured by a hot cathode gauge, is
1.5×10−12mbar, corresponding to the gauge's measurement limit. We measure the local pressure at the ion location by observing collision-induced reordering events in a long ion chain of mixed-isotope Yb
+. From the observed reordering frequency, we extract the average interval between collisions to be
(1.9±0.1)hrs/ion. This corresponds to a local pressure of
(3.9±0.3)×10−12mbar at the ion location, assuming that all collisions arise from background H
2 molecules at room temperature. Our demonstration extends the continuous operation time of a quantum processor while maintaining the simplicity of a room-temperature system that does not require cryogenic apparatus.