85 research outputs found
Focusing a fountain of neutral cesium atoms with an electrostatic lens triplet
An electrostatic lens with three focusing elements in an alternating-gradient
configuration is used to focus a fountain of cesium atoms in their ground
(strong-field-seeking) state. The lens electrodes are shaped to produce only
sextupole plus dipole equipotentials which avoids adding the unnecessary
nonlinear forces present in cylindrical lenses. Defocusing between lenses is
greatly reduced by having all of the main electric fields point in the same
direction and be of nearly equal magnitude. The addition of the third lens gave
us better control of the focusing strength in the two transverse planes and
allowed focusing of the beam to half the image size in both planes. The beam
envelope was calculated for lens voltages selected to produced specific
focusing properties. The calculations, starting from first principles, were
compared with measured beam sizes and found to be in good agreement.
Application to fountain experiments, atomic clocks, and focusing polar
molecules in strong-field-seeking states is discussed.Comment: 8 pages 10 figure
Realizing two-qubit gates through mode engineering on a trapped-ion quantum computer
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 demonstrate the required mode
engineering 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.Comment: arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:2104.13870 Updated funding
informatio
Electron electric dipole moment experiment using electric-field quantized slow cesium atoms
A proof-of-principle electron electric dipole moment (e-EDM) experiment using
slow cesium atoms, nulled magnetic fields, and electric field quantization has
been performed. With the ambient magnetic fields seen by the atoms reduced to
less than 200 pT, an electric field of 6 MV/m lifts the degeneracy between
states of unequal mF and, along with the low (approximately 3 m/s) velocity,
suppresses the systematic effect from the motional magnetic field. The low
velocity and small residual magnetic field have made it possible to induce
transitions between states and to perform state preparation, analysis, and
detection in regions free of applied static magnetic and electric fields. This
experiment demonstrates techniques that may be used to improve the e-EDM limit
by two orders of magnitude, but it is not in itself a sensitive e-EDM search,
mostly due to limitations of the laser system.Comment: 9 pages, 8 figures, accepted for publication in Phys. Rev.
Controlling trapping potentials and stray electric fields in a microfabricated ion trap through design and compensation
Recent advances in quantum information processing with trapped ions have
demonstrated the need for new ion trap architectures capable of holding and
manipulating chains of many (>10) ions. Here we present the design and detailed
characterization of a new linear trap, microfabricated with scalable
complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) techniques, that is well-suited
to this challenge. Forty-four individually controlled DC electrodes provide the
many degrees of freedom required to construct anharmonic potential wells,
shuttle ions, merge and split ion chains, precisely tune secular mode
frequencies, and adjust the orientation of trap axes. Microfabricated
capacitors on DC electrodes suppress radio-frequency pickup and excess
micromotion, while a top-level ground layer simplifies modeling of electric
fields and protects trap structures underneath. A localized aperture in the
substrate provides access to the trapping region from an oven below, permitting
deterministic loading of particular isotopic/elemental sequences via
species-selective photoionization. The shapes of the aperture and
radio-frequency electrodes are optimized to minimize perturbation of the
trapping pseudopotential. Laboratory experiments verify simulated potentials
and characterize trapping lifetimes, stray electric fields, and ion heating
rates, while measurement and cancellation of spatially-varying stray electric
fields permits the formation of nearly-equally spaced ion chains.Comment: 17 pages (including references), 7 figure
Demonstration of integrated microscale optics in surface-electrode ion traps
In ion trap quantum information processing, efficient fluorescence collection
is critical for fast, high-fidelity qubit detection and ion-photon
entanglement. The expected size of future many-ion processors require scalable
light collection systems. We report on the development and testing of a
microfabricated surface-electrode ion trap with an integrated high numerical
aperture (NA) micromirror for fluorescence collection. When coupled to a low NA
lens, the optical system is inherently scalable to large arrays of mirrors in a
single device. We demonstrate stable trapping and transport of 40Ca+ ions over
a 0.63 NA micromirror and observe a factor of 1.9 enhancement in photon
collection compared to the planar region of the trap.Comment: 15 pages, 8 figure
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