A. J. Rasmusson

We investigate high frequency motional states of trapped atomic ions. Trapped ions in rf traps are confined by an approximate harmonic potential and exhibit quantum motional states that mediate essential techniques in quantum computing, simulation, networking, and precision measurement. However, motional state decoherence mechanisms, heating and dephasing, are broadly limiting: reduced two-qubit gate fidelities; lower fidelity and lifetime of highly nonclassical bosonic states; long laser cooling times; and large recoil heating rates. These also challenge the scalability of increasingly sophisticated protocols. We propose high motional frequency ion trapping as an operating regime that addresses these challenges and reshapes the design landscape for quantum information experiments and quantum control techniques. We report an experimentally motivated investigation of realizing this high-frequency regime and discuss the consequences for laser cooling, motional state coherence, fidelity and lifetime of nonclassical bosonic states, and scalability of experimental runtimes. We report clear design trajectories for ion traps to reach high motional frequency, a new limiting mechanism for laser cooling at these high frequencies, and more than an order-of-magnitude speedup in experimental duty cycles with larger speed ups possible for quantum error correction protocols. Taken together, high motional frequency ion trapping has broad implications for the future of quantum information experiments.

Quantum nuclear dynamics with wavepacket time-evolution is classically intractable and viewed as a promising avenue for quantum information processing. Here, we use an IonQ 11-qubit trapped-ion quantum computer, Harmony, to study the quantum wavepacket dynamics of a shared-proton within a short-strong hydrogen-bonded system. We also provide the first application of distributed quantum computing for chemical dynamics problems, where the distributed set of quantum processes is constructed using a tensor network formalism. For a range of initial states, we experimentally drive the ion-trap system to emulate the quantum nuclear wavepacket as it evolves along the potential surface generated from electronic structure. Following the experimental creation of the nuclear wavepacket, we extract measurement observables such as its time-dependent spatial projection and its characteristic vibrational frequencies to good agreement with classical results. Vibrational eigenenergies obtained from quantum computational are in agreement with those obtained from classical simulations to within a fraction of a kcal/mol, thus suggesting chemical accuracy. Our approach opens a new paradigm for studying the quantum chemical dynamics and vibrational spectra of molecules and also provides the first demonstration for parallel quantum computation on a distributed set of ion-trap quantum computers.

We experimentally study the heating of trapped atomic ions during measurement of their internal qubit states. During measurement, ions are projected into one of two basis states and discriminated by their state-dependent fluorescence. We observe that ions in the fluorescing state rapidly scatter photons and heat at a rate of \mbox{$\dot{\bar{n}}\gtrsim 2\times 10^4$ quanta/s}, which is orders of magnitude faster than typical anomalous ion heating rates. We introduce a quantum trajectory-based framework that accurately reproduces the experimental results and provides a unified description of ion heating for both continuous and discrete sources.

Trapped-ion quantum simulators have demonstrated a long history of studying the physics of interacting spin-lattice systems using globally addressed entangling operations. Here, we seek to broaden and delimit the classes of effective spin-spin interactions achievable using exclusively global driving fields. We find that new categories of interaction graphs become achievable with perfect or near-perfect theoretical fidelity by tailoring the coupling to each vibrational mode of the ion crystal, or by shaping the trapping potential to include specific anharmonic terms. We also derive a rigorous test to determine whether a desired interaction graph is accessible using only globally driven fields. These tools broaden the reach of trapped-ion quantum simulators so that they may more easily address open questions in materials science and quantum chemistry.

Resolved sideband cooling is a standard technique for cooling trapped ions below the Doppler limit to near their motional ground state. Yet, the most common methods for sideband cooling implicitly rely on low Doppler-cooled temperatures and tightly confined ions, and they cannot be optimized for different experimental conditions. Here we introduce a framework which calculates the fastest possible pulsed sideband cooling sequence for a given number of pulses and set of experimental parameters, and we verify its improvement compared to traditional methods using a trapped $^{171}$Yb$^+$ ion. After extensive cooling, we find that the ion motional distribution is distinctly non-thermal and thus not amenable to standard thermometry techniques. We therefore develop and experimentally validate an improved method to measure ion temperatures after sideband cooling. These techniques will enable more efficient cooling and thermometry within trapped-ion systems, especially those with high initial temperatures or spatially-extended ion wavepackets.

We present the design and experimental demonstration of an open-endcap radio frequency trap to confine ion crystals in the radial-two dimensional (2D) structural phase. The central axis of the trap is kept free of obstructions to allow for site-resolved imaging of ions in the 2D crystal plane, and the confining potentials are provided by four segmented blade electrodes. We discuss the design challenges, fabrication techniques, and voltage requirements for implementing this open-endcap trap. Finally, we validate its operation by confining up to 29 ions in a 2D triangular lattice, oriented such that both in-plane principal axes of the 2D crystal lie in the radial direction.

We experimentally study the real-time susceptibility of trapped-ion quantum systems to small doses of ionizing radiation. We expose an ion-trap apparatus to a variety of $α$, $β$, and $γ$ sources and measure the resulting changes in trapped-ion qubit lifetimes, coherence times, gate fidelities, and motional heating rates. We found no quantifiable degradation of ion trap performance in the presence of low-dose radiation sources for any of the measurements performed. This finding is encouraging for the long-term prospects of using ion-based quantum information systems in extreme environments, indicating that much larger doses may be required to induce errors in trapped-ion quantum processors.

We experimentally study two-dimensional (2D) Coulomb crystals in the "radial-2D" phase of a linear Paul trap. This phase is identified by a 2D ion lattice aligned entirely with the radial plane and is created by imposing a large ratio of axial to radial trapping potentials. Using arrays of up to 19 $^{171}$Yb$^+$ ions, we demonstrate that the structural phase boundaries and vibrational mode frequencies of such crystals are well-described by the pseudopotential approximation, despite the time-dependent ion positions driven by intrinsic micromotion. We further observe that micromotion-induced heating of the radial-2D crystal is confined to the radial plane. Finally, we verify that the transverse motional modes, which are used in most ion-trap quantum simulation schemes, remain decoupled and cold in this geometry. Our results establish radial-2D ion crystals as a robust experimental platform for realizing a variety of theoretical proposals in quantum simulation and computation.