Optical engineering for trapped ion quantum computing

Daniel Stick

Daniel Stick

Crystal Senko

The quest to engineer quantum computers of a useful scope faces many challenges that will require continued investigation of the physics underlying the devices. In this talk, I focus on trapped ion quantum computing. I discuss several recent advances my research group has contributed regarding optical control of Ba+ ions for quantum information processing, including multi-level qudit control and novel all-optical loading techniques, and provide a brief outlook on how photonic technologies can enable further progress in this field.

Ming Li, Nhung H. Nguyen, Alaina Green +3 more

Two-qubit gates are a fundamental constituent of a quantum computer and typically its most challenging operation. In a trapped-ion quantum computer, this is typically implemented with laser beams which are modulated in amplitude, frequency, phase, or a combination of these. The required modulation becomes increasingly more complex as the quantum computer becomes larger, complicating the control hardware design. Here we develop a simple method to essentially remove the pulse-modulation complexity by engineering the normal modes of the ion chain. We experimentally test the feasibility of the method in a three-ion chain. This opens up the possibility to trade off complexity between the design of the trapping fields and the optical control system, which will help scale the ion-trap quantum computing platform.

Taehyun Kim, Caleb W. Knoernschild, Justin V. Migacz +3 more

J. F. Poyatos, S. A. Gardiner, R. Walser +3 more