34 research outputs found
Controlling fast transport of cold trapped ions
We realize fast transport of ions in a segmented micro-structured Paul trap.
The ion is shuttled over a distance of more than 10^4 times its groundstate
wavefunction size during only 5 motional cycles of the trap (280 micro meter in
3.6 micro seconds). Starting from a ground-state-cooled ion, we find an
optimized transport such that the energy increase is as low as 0.10 0.01
motional quanta. In addition, we demonstrate that quantum information stored in
a spin-motion entangled state is preserved throughout the transport. Shuttling
operations are concatenated, as a proof-of-principle for the shuttling-based
architecture to scalable ion trap quantum computing.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure
Focusing a deterministic single-ion beam
We focus down an ion beam consisting of single 40Ca+ ions to a spot size of a
few mum using an einzel-lens. Starting from a segmented linear Paul trap, we
have implemented a procedure which allows us to deterministically load a
predetermined number of ions by using the potential shaping capabilities of our
segmented ion trap. For single-ion loading, an efficiency of 96.7(7)% has been
achieved. These ions are then deterministically extracted out of the trap and
focused down to a 1sigma-spot radius of (4.6 \pm 1.3)mum at a distance of 257mm
from the trap center. Compared to former measurements without ion optics, the
einzel-lens is focusing down the single-ion beam by a factor of 12. Due to the
small beam divergence and narrow velocity distribution of our ion source,
chromatic and spherical aberration at the einzel-lens is vastly reduced,
presenting a promising starting point for focusing single ions on their way to
a substrate.Comment: 16 pages, 7 figure
A trapped-ion local field probe
We introduce a measurement scheme that utilizes a single ion as a local field
probe. The ion is confined in a segmented Paul trap and shuttled around to
reach different probing sites. By the use of a single atom probe, it becomes
possible characterizing fields with spatial resolution of a few nm within an
extensive region of millimeters. We demonstrate the scheme by accurately
investigating the electric fields providing the confinement for the ion. For
this we present all theoretical and practical methods necessary to generate
these potentials. We find sub-percent agreement between measured and calculated
electric field values
Fabrication of a planar micro Penning trap and numerical investigations of versatile ion positioning protocols
We describe a versatile planar Penning trap structure, which allows to
dynamically modify the trapping conguration almost arbitrarily. The trap
consists of 37 hexagonal electrodes, each with a circumcirle-diameter of 300 m,
fabricated in a gold-on-sapphire lithographic technique. Every hexagon can be
addressed individually, thus shaping the electric potential. The fabrication of
such a device with clean room methods is demonstrated. We illustrate the
variability of the device by a detailed numerical simulation of a lateral and a
vertical transport and we simulate trapping in racetrack and articial crystal
congurations. The trap may be used for ions or electrons, as a versatile
container for quantum optics and quantum information experiments.Comment: 10 pages, 7 figures, pdflatex, to be published in New Journal of
Physics (NJP) various changes according to the wishes of the NJP referees.
Text added and moved around, title changed, abstract changed, references
added rev3: one reference had a typo (ref 15), fixed (phys rev a 72, not 71
Colloquium: Trapped ions as quantum bits -- essential numerical tools
Trapped, laser-cooled atoms and ions are quantum systems which can be
experimentally controlled with an as yet unmatched degree of precision. Due to
the control of the motion and the internal degrees of freedom, these quantum
systems can be adequately described by a well known Hamiltonian. In this
colloquium, we present powerful numerical tools for the optimization of the
external control of the motional and internal states of trapped neutral atoms,
explicitly applied to the case of trapped laser-cooled ions in a segmented
ion-trap. We then delve into solving inverse problems, when optimizing trapping
potentials for ions. Our presentation is complemented by a quantum mechanical
treatment of the wavepacket dynamics of a trapped ion. Efficient numerical
solvers for both time-independent and time-dependent problems are provided.
Shaping the motional wavefunctions and optimizing a quantum gate is realized by
the application of quantum optimal control techniques. The numerical methods
presented can also be used to gain an intuitive understanding of quantum
experiments with trapped ions by performing virtual simulated experiments on a
personal computer. Code and executables are supplied as supplementary online
material (http://kilian-singer.de/ent).Comment: accepted for publication in Review of Modern Physics 201
Coherent Manipulation of a Ca Spin Qubit in a Micro Ion Trap
We demonstrate the implementation of a spin qubit with a single Ca ion in a
micro ion trap. The qubit is encoded in the Zeeman ground state levels mJ=+1/2
and mJ=-1/2 of the S1/2 state of the ion. We show sideband cooling close to the
vibrational ground state and demonstrate the initialization and readout of the
qubit levels with 99.5% efficiency. We employ a Raman transition close to the
S1/2 - P1/2 resonance for coherent manipulation of the qubit. We observe single
qubit rotations with 96% fidelity and gate times below 5mus. Rabi oscillations
on the blue motional sideband are used to extract the phonon number
distribution. The dynamics of this distribution is analyzed to deduce the
trap-induced heating rate of 0.3(1) phonons/ms
Fabrication and heating rate study of microscopic surface electrode ion traps
We report heating rate measurements in a microfabricated gold-on-sapphire
surface electrode ion trap with trapping height of approximately 240 micron.
Using the Doppler recooling method, we characterize the trap heating rates over
an extended region of the trap. The noise spectral density of the trap falls in
the range of noise spectra reported in ion traps at room temperature. We find
that during the first months of operation the heating rates increase by
approximately one order of magnitude. The increase in heating rates is largest
in the ion loading region of the trap, providing a strong hint that surface
contamination plays a major role for excessive heating rates. We discuss data
found in the literature and possible relation of anomalous heating to sources
of noise and dissipation in other systems, namely impurity atoms adsorbed on
metal surfaces and amorphous dielectrics.Comment: 17 pages, 5 figure
Quantum Phases of Trapped Ions in an Optical Lattice
We propose loading trapped ions into microtraps formed by an optical lattice.
For harmonic microtraps, the Coulomb coupling of the spatial motions of
neighboring ions can be used to construct a broad class of effective
short-range Hamiltonians acting on an internal degree of freedom of the ions.
For large anharmonicities, on the other hand, the spatial motion of the ions
itself represents a spin-1/2 model with frustrated dipolar XY interactions. We
illustrate the latter setup with three systems: the linear chain, the zig-zag
ladder, and the triangular lattice. In the frustrated zig-zag ladder with
dipolar interactions we find chiral ordering beyond what was predicted
previously for a next-nearest-neighbor model. In the frustrated anisotropic
triangular lattice with nearest-neighbor interactions we find that the
transition from the one-dimensional gapless spin-liquid phase to the
two-dimensional spiraling ordered phase passes through a gapped spin-liquid
phase, similar to what has been predicted for the same model with Heisenberg
interactions. Further, a second gapped spin-liquid phase marks the transition
to the two-dimensional Neel-ordered phase.Comment: re-formatted; added discussion of feasibilit