Wahnschaffe, Martina

Date: Wednesday, June 22, 2016
Time: 16:00
Place: ETH Zurich, Hönggerberg, HPF G 6
Hosts: Florian Leupold / Jonathan Home

Engineered microwave control for trapped ions

Martina Wahnschaffe
Institute of Quantum Optics, Leibniz Universität Hannover, Germany

Trapped ions are a promising quantum system for quantum simulations as well as quantum information processing. We focus on the integration of microwave electrodes for controlling the quantum states of the ions through the resulting near-field, a step towards large scale quantum processors. In the near-field approach, amplitude gradients from conductors in the trap structure induce the spin-motional coupling required for entangling gates. To prevent off-resonant carrier excitation, we need to suppress the field amplitude while maintaining a strong gradient. In our experiment, a single meander-like microwave conductor structure provides the desired field configuration. Numerical simulations were used to optimize the electrode structure of the trap including rf, dc and microwave electrodes. We perform a spatial characterization of the microwave near-field with a single ion as a local field probe and find good agreement with the simulations. Using the spatial variation of the microwave near-field, we demonstrate motional sideband transitions on our field-independent qubit as a basic prerequisite towards entangling multi-qubit quantum logic gates.