Transport of quantum states and separation of ions in a dual RF ion trap

Abstract

We have investigated ion dynamics associated with a dual linear ion trap where ions can be stored in and moved between two distinct locations. Such a trap is a building block for a system to engineer arbitrary quantum states of ion ensembles. Specifically, this trap is the unit cell in a strategy for scalable quantum computing using a series of interconnected ion traps. We have transferred an ion between trap locations 1.2 mm apart in 50 $\mu$s with near unit efficiency ($> 10^{6}$ consecutive transfers) and negligible motional heating, while maintaining internal-state coherence. In addition, we have separated two ions held in a common trap into two distinct traps.

Quantum information processing with trapped ions

“…Such arrays also enable highly parallel processing and ancilla qubit readout in separate trapping regions so that the logical ions are shielded from the scattered laser light. Some of the initial steps towards this scheme have been reported by Rowe et al . (2002).…”

Quantum information processing and quantum control with trapped atomic ions

“…To mitigate this problem (and to ease the problem of single-qubit addressing by laser beam focusing) ions could be distributed over arrays of individual trap zones so that in each zone the number of ions is relatively small and single-mode addressing is not problematic. One way to transfer information throughout the array would be to physically move the ions between zones [10,[122][123][124]. Another way this could be accomplished is to first create entangled pairs Photographs of a multizone trap that incorporates an 'X' junction [135].…”

“…Another way this could be accomplished is to first create entangled pairs Photographs of a multizone trap that incorporates an 'X' junction [135]. The trap is formed from two gold-coated alumina wafers similar to that described in [124]. An array of interconnected trap zones that includes junctions will enable two ions selected from arbitrary locations in the array to be transported to a common zone with time-dependent potentials applied to the segmented electrodes, in order to perform two-qubit logic gates.…”

“…Multizone arrays are currently being explored in several laboratories, as summarized in [39]. Transport of ions in linear arrays has been studied in [65,124,131,132] and methods to deterministically order ions in [101,133]. For efficient computation, we want to perform multiqubit gates between ions selected from arbitrary locations in the processor.…”

Oxford ion-trap quantum computing project

“…Although the original architecture of Cirac & Zoller (1995) appeared to be limited in its prospects for scalability to large numbers of qubits, proposals for multiple ion traps circumvent this problem (Kielpinski et al . 2002) and recent experiments on the`unit cell' of such a system indicate the feasibility of this approach (Rowe et al . 2002).…”