Penning micro-trap for quantum computing.

Trapped ions in radio-frequency traps are among the leading approaches for realizing quantum computers, because of high-fidelity quantum gates and long coherence times1-3. However, the use of radio-frequencies presents several challenges to scaling, including requiring compatibility of chips with high voltages4, managing power dissipation5 and restricting transport and placement of ions6. Here we realize a micro-fabricated Penning ion trap that removes these restrictions by replacing the radio-frequency field with a 3 T magnetic field. We demonstrate full quantum control of an ion in this setting, as well as the ability to transport the ion arbitrarily in the trapping plane above the chip. This unique feature of the Penning micro-trap approach opens up a modification of the quantum charge-coupled device architecture with improved connectivity and flexibility, facilitating the realization of large-scale trapped-ion quantum computing, quantum simulation and quantum sensing.

Control of an Atomic Quadrupole Transition in a Phase-Stable Standing Wave.

Using a single calcium ion confined in a surface-electrode trap, we study the interaction of electric quadrupole transitions with a passively phase-stable optical standing wave field sourced by photonics integrated within the trap. We characterize the optical fields through spatial mapping of the Rabi frequencies of both carrier and motional sideband transitions as well as ac Stark shifts. Our measurements demonstrate the ability to engineer favorable combinations of sideband and carrier Rabi frequency as well as ac Stark shifts for specific tasks in quantum state control and metrology.

Spin-motion entanglement and state diagnosis with squeezed oscillator wavepackets.

Mesoscopic superpositions of distinguishable coherent states provide an analogue of the 'Schrödinger's cat' thought experiment. For mechanical oscillators these have primarily been realized using coherent wavepackets, for which the distinguishability arises as a result of the spatial separation of the superposed states. Here we demonstrate superpositions composed of squeezed wavepackets, which we generate by applying an internal-state-dependent force to a single trapped ion initialized in a squeezed vacuum state with nine decibel reduction in the quadrature variance. This allows us to characterize the initial squeezed wavepacket by monitoring the onset of spin-motion entanglement, and to verify the evolution of the number states of the oscillator as a function of the duration of the force. In both cases we observe clear differences between displacements aligned with the squeezed and anti-squeezed axes. We observe coherent revivals when inverting the state-dependent force after separating the wavepackets by more than 19 times the ground-state root mean squared extent, which corresponds to 56 times the root mean squared extent of the squeezed wavepacket along the displacement direction. Aside from their fundamental nature, these states may be useful for quantum metrology or quantum information processing with continuous variables.

Parallel Transport Quantum Logic Gates with Trapped Ions.

We demonstrate single-qubit operations by transporting a beryllium ion with a controlled velocity through a stationary laser beam. We use these to perform coherent sequences of quantum operations, and to perform parallel quantum logic gates on two ions in different processing zones of a multiplexed ion trap chip using a single recycled laser beam. For the latter, we demonstrate individually addressed single-qubit gates by local control of the speed of each ion. The fidelities we observe are consistent with operations performed using standard methods involving static ions and pulsed laser fields. This work therefore provides a path to scalable ion trap quantum computing with reduced requirements on the optical control complexity.

Quantum gate teleportation between separated qubits in a trapped-ion processor.

Large-scale quantum computers will require quantum gate operations between widely separated qubits. A method for implementing such operations, known as quantum gate teleportation (QGT), requires only local operations, classical communication, and shared entanglement. We demonstrate QGT in a scalable architecture by deterministically teleporting a controlled-NOT (CNOT) gate between two qubits in spatially separated locations in an ion trap. The entanglement fidelity of our teleported CNOT is in the interval (0.845, 0.872) at the 95% confidence level. The implementation combines ion shuttling with individually addressed single-qubit rotations and detections, same- and mixed-species two-qubit gates, and real-time conditional operations, thereby demonstrating essential tools for scaling trapped-ion quantum computers combined in a single device.