Mehta, Karan

Date: Monday, September 5, 2016
Time: 13:00
Place: ETH Zurich, Hönggerberg, HPF G 6
Host: Jonathan Home

Integrated optics and CMOS trapped-ion technologies

Karan Mehta
MIT & Lincoln Labs, Cambridge, USA

Quantum information processors, based on any of the physical qubit modalities currently under study, will rely on scalable integration of the classical apparatus required to direct and collect signals to/from each qubit. Towards this end in trapped-ion systems, and given the various optical signals involved, we present our work on nanophotonic waveguides and diffraction-limited focusing grating couplers formed within planar ion trap chips, allowing spatially-selective ion addressing with tightly focused beams. Such an approach brings a number of advantages for trapped-ion systems, including the scalability of the planar fabrication used. Additionally, we show the possibility for fabrication of complex trap structures in complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) processes, and discuss our efforts at integrated CMOS detectors for fluorescence readout. We argue that such approaches can address crucial challenges in implementing trapped-ion QIP at an interesting scale; and furthermore, that trapped ions’ apparent distance from scalable solid-state technologies may in fact be an advantage in allowing a cooperation without introducing decoherence.