An ultralarge ring He–Ne ring laser gyroscope, UG-2, with area 834 m2 and dimensions 39.7×21 m2, has been built underground at Cashmere Cavern, Christchurch, New Zealand (latitude −43.575°). Earth rotation is sufficient to unlock it, giving a Sagnac frequency of 2.18 kHz. Supermirrors are used with transmission ∼0.18 parts per million (ppm) and optical loss unexpectedly high at ∼200 ppm per reflection. The cavity Q is 1.5×1012. Residual Sagnac frequency error caused by backscatter coupling is measured as <2 parts in 108. Its best stability is achieved for an averaging time of ∼2000 s, for which the Allan Deviation of the Sagnac frequency is 0.08 mHz, or four parts in 108 of Earth rotation rate. The dominant processes generating the residual rotational noise are, for times <10 s, microseismic ground movements, and for times >1000 s, mechanical movement of the mirror assemblies, which act to change the geometrical dimensions and tilt. At all averaging times the residual rotational noise is well above the limit imposed by quantum phase fluctuations. It is concluded from comparisons among many large ring lasers that the excess mirror losses arise from high order aberrations, and UG-2 may be larger than the optimum size.

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We have developed a vacuum chamber and control system for rapid testing of microfabricated surface ion traps. Our system is modular in design and is based on an in-vacuum printed circuit board with integrated filters. We have used this system to successfully trap and cool barium ions and have achieved ion 'dark' lifetimes of 31.6 s ± 3.4 s with controlled shuttling of ions. We provide a detailed description of the ion trap system including the in-vacuum materials used, control electronics and neutral atom source. We discuss the challenges presented in achieving a system which can work reliably over two years of operations in which the trap under test was changed at least 10 times.

We report on progress toward implementing mixed ion species quantum information processing for a scalable ion-trap architecture. Mixed species chains may help solve several problems with scaling ion-trap quantum computation to large numbers of qubits. Initial temperature measurements of linear Coulomb crystals containing barium and ytterbium ions indicate that the mass difference does not significantly impede cooling at low ion numbers. Average motional occupation numbers are estimated to ben ≈ 130 quanta per mode for chains with small numbers of ions, which is within a factor of three of the Doppler limit for barium ions in our trap. We also discuss generation of ion-photon entanglement with barium ions with a fidelity of F ≥ 0.84, which is an initial step towards remote ion-ion coupling in a more scalable quantum information architecture. Further, we are working to implement these techniques in surface traps in order to exercise greater control over ion chain ordering and positioning.