November 19, 2024 | Robert D. Delaney, Lucas R. Sletten, Matthew J. Cich, Brian Estey, Maya I. Fabrikant, David Hayes, Ian M. Hoffman, James Hostetter, Christopher Langer, Steven A. Moses, Abigail R. Perry, Timothy A. Peterson, Andrew Schaffer, Curtis Volin, Grahaeme Vittorini, and William Cody Burton
This study presents a scalable method for controlling ion crystals in a grid-based surface-electrode Paul trap, enabling efficient transport and sorting of multispecies ions. The approach utilizes a novel transport primitive called 'center to left or right' (C2LR), which allows for independent control of ion movement in each grid site using a single digital signal and a fixed number of analog signals. The C2LR primitive enables conditional operations such as site-dependent swapping and reordering of ions between adjacent grid sites. The method was tested with two experimental systems containing $ {}^{171}Yb^{+}+{}^{138}Ba^{+} $ and $ {}^{137}Ba^{+}-{}^{88}Sr^{+} $ ions, demonstrating subquanta motional excitation in axial modes at exchange rates of 2.5 kHz. The results show that the crystals remain in their motional ground state during high-speed transport, paving the way for large-scale, 2D ion traps with practical wiring requirements. The study also highlights the potential for extending these techniques to implement other conditional operations in the quantum charge-coupled device (QCCD) architecture, such as gates, initialization, and measurement. The work demonstrates the feasibility of scalable ion transport in a grid-based Paul trap, with implications for the development of larger, more efficient trapped ion quantum processors.This study presents a scalable method for controlling ion crystals in a grid-based surface-electrode Paul trap, enabling efficient transport and sorting of multispecies ions. The approach utilizes a novel transport primitive called 'center to left or right' (C2LR), which allows for independent control of ion movement in each grid site using a single digital signal and a fixed number of analog signals. The C2LR primitive enables conditional operations such as site-dependent swapping and reordering of ions between adjacent grid sites. The method was tested with two experimental systems containing $ {}^{171}Yb^{+}+{}^{138}Ba^{+} $ and $ {}^{137}Ba^{+}-{}^{88}Sr^{+} $ ions, demonstrating subquanta motional excitation in axial modes at exchange rates of 2.5 kHz. The results show that the crystals remain in their motional ground state during high-speed transport, paving the way for large-scale, 2D ion traps with practical wiring requirements. The study also highlights the potential for extending these techniques to implement other conditional operations in the quantum charge-coupled device (QCCD) architecture, such as gates, initialization, and measurement. The work demonstrates the feasibility of scalable ion transport in a grid-based Paul trap, with implications for the development of larger, more efficient trapped ion quantum processors.