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IEEE Nanotechnology Magazine

Quantum Computing With Trapped Ions: An overview

Wen-Han Png, Ting Hsu, Tze-Wei Liu, Guin-Dar Lin, M.-S. Chang

Published Jun 16, 2022• 10 citations
Publisher

Abstract

An array of trapped atomic ions that are laser cooled and isolated in an ultrahigh-vacuum environment presents one of the most advanced physical platforms for realizing a practical quantum computer. Small-scale ion quantum computers up to tens of ions have been built and achieved the highest fidelities on elementary quantum operations and overall quantum volume (QV). This article provides an overview of the elements of trapped-ion quantum computing (TIQC), current achievements in the field, and future perspectives.

DOI
10.1109/mnano.2022.3175384

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An array of trapped atomic ions that are laser cooled and isolated in an ultrahigh-vacuum environment presents one of the most advanced physical platforms for realizing a practical quantum computer. Small-scale ion quantum computers up to tens of ions have been built and achieved the highest fidelities on elementary quantum operations and overall quantum volume (QV). This article provides an overview of the elements of trapped-ion quantum computing (TIQC), current achievements in the field, and future perspectives.
This is the second paper in a series of papers providing an overview of different quantum computing hardware platforms from an industrial end-user perspective. It follows our first paper on neutral-atom quantum computing. In the present paper, we provide a survey on the current state-of-the-art in trapped-ion quantum computing, taking up again the perspective of an industrial end-user. To this end, our paper covers, on the one hand, a comprehensive introduction to the physical foundations and mechanisms that play an important role in operating a trapped-ion quantum computer. On the other hand, we provide an overview of the key performance metrics that best describe and characterise such a device's current computing capability. These metrics encompass performance indicators such as qubit numbers, gate times and errors, native gate sets, qubit stability and scalability as well as considerations regarding the general qubit types and trap architectures. In order to ensure that these metrics reflect the current state of trapped-ion quantum computing as accurate as possible, they have been obtained by both an extensive review of recent literature and, more importantly, from discussions with various quantum hardware vendors in the field. We combine these factors and provide - again from an industrial end-user perspective - an overview of what is currently possible with trapped-ion quantum computers, which algorithms and problems are especially suitable for this platform, what are the relevant end-to-end wall clock times for calculations, and what might be possible with future fault-tolerant trapped-ion quantum computers.
Ion trap is one of the leading physical platforms to implement quantum computation. Currently, high-fidelity elementary quantum operations above the fault-tolerant threshold, including state preparation, measurement and universal gates, have been demonstrated for tens of ionic qubits. One important future research direction is to further enlarge the qubit number to the scale required for solving practical problems while maintaining the high performance of individual qubits. This paper introduces the current mainstream schemes for scalable ion trap quantum computation like quantum charge-coupled device (QCCD) and ion-photon quantum network, and describes the main limiting factors in current research. Then we further explore new schemes to scale up the qubit number like two-dimensional ion crystals and dual-type qubit, and discuss the future research directions.
Trapped atomic ions manipulated by laser beams is a leading candidate to construct scalable and practical quantum computers. Fully programmable quantum computers have been constructed using this technology, offering the highest performance quantum computing in commercial setting. Controlling atomic qubits with lasers is at the heart of constructing reliable trapped ion quantum computers. In this talk, I will discuss the stringent requirement for the optical systems required to build high performance trapped ion quantum computers, and prospect for constructing scalable systems in the future.
All of the essential elements for a trapped ion quantum computer have been demonstrated in previous experiments. There are, however, many technical challenges to scaling the number of quantum bits from the current state-of-the-art (about 8) to the number of qubits needed for practical quantum computing. Although there is experimental evidence supporting one possible method (using cw laser pulses and common motional modes as the ion interaction) for deterministic ion entanglement, it is not known if that will ultimately be the most practical method for building a large-scale quantum computer. One model for scalable quantum computing with trapped ions calls for large interconnected arrays of small traps. Several advancements reported in this work include the development of three layer alumina traps as well as MEMS fabricated microtraps. Other models for scalable trapped ion quantum computing do not call for local entanglement or call for relaxed constraints on the motional control of the ions. These proposals require the use of ultrafast laser pulses interacting with the ions. This work reviews several experiments that explore the interaction between the ultrafast laser and single tripped ions including early indication of ultrafast control and entanglement between a single ion and a single photon frequency qubit.
The electromagnetic confinement of atomic ions has provided a useful testbed for many different applications in atomic physics, including laser cooling {1}, mass spectrometry {2}, and precision control of nearly-pure quantum states {3}. Recently, ion traps have been effectively applied to the growing field of quantum computation {4}, where the ability to isolate a single ion from its environment has made it an attractive architecture for a large-scale quantum information processor {5, 6, 7}. While many of the fundamental quantum computing building blocks have been demonstrated with trapped ions {8}, the technology for scaling to large numbers of ion quantum bits (qubits) is just beginning to develop. In this paper, we describe an important milestone on this path with the successful operation of an ion trap fabricated on an integrated gallium arsenide (GaAs) heterostructure, which could in principal scale to host a large array of ions.