Susceptibility of Trapped-Ion Qubits to Low-Dose Radiation Sources

Abstract

We experimentally study the real-time susceptibility of trapped-ion quantum systems to small doses of ionizing radiation. We expose an ion-trap apparatus to a variety of α, β, and γ sources and measure the resulting changes in trappedion qubit lifetimes, coherence times, gate fidelities, and motional heating rates. We found no quantifiable degradation of ion trap performance in the presence of low-dose radiation sources for any of the measurements performed. This finding is encouraging for the long-term prospects of using ion-based quantum information systems in extreme environments, indicating that much larger doses may be required to induce errors in trapped-ion quantum processors.