Professor Hartmut Häffner
University of California Berkeley

Wiring up trapped ions for quantum information

Abstract:

Single ions trapped by electrical forces in an ion trap offer excellent quantum control of their motional degrees-of-freedom. Connecting two trapped ions with a wire creates an electric circuit in which two of the zillions of charge carriers can be accurately controlled in the quantum regime. Our goal is to study under which circumstances the two ions will be coherently coupled to each other.

Currently, we are investigating the feasibility of these experiments on microfabricated planar ion traps. Such traps offer multiple independently tunable trapping regions on the same device. We are characterizing the behavior of gold-on-sapphire planar traps in terms of heating of the ion motion due to charges fluctuating on the trap surface. In addition, we discuss trap operation and heating rates in the presence of a floating conductor. The latter will serve as the wire connecting two ions trapped in neighboring trapping regions.