C. Wunderlich

We report the implementation of a perceptron quantum gate in an ion-trap quantum computer. In this scheme, a perceptron's target qubit changes its state depending on the interactions with several qubits. The target qubit displays a tunable sigmoid switching behaviour becoming a universal approximator when nested with other percetrons. The procedure consists on the adiabatic ramp-down of a dressing-field applied to the target qubit. We also use two successive perceptron quantum gates to implement a XNOR-gate, where the perceptron qubit changes its state only when the parity of two input qubits is even. The applicability can be generalized to higher-dimensional gates as well as the reconstruction of arbitrary bounded continuous functions of the perceptron observables.

The availability of a universal quantum computer will have fundamental impact on a vast number of research fields and society as a whole. An increasingly large scientific and industrial community is working towards the realization of such a device. An arbitrarily large quantum computer is best constructed using a modular approach. We present a blueprint for a trapped-ion based scalable quantum computer module which makes it possible to create a scalable quantum computer architecture based on long-wavelength radiation quantum gates. The modules control all operations as stand-alone units, are constructed using silicon microfabrication techniques and they are within reach of current technology. To perform the required quantum computations, the modules make use of long-wavelength-radiation based quantum gate technology. To scale this microwave quantum computer architecture to an arbitrary size we present a fully scalable design that makes use of ion transport between different modules, thereby allowing arbitrarily many modules to be connected to construct a large-scale device. A high-error-threshold surface error correction code can be implemented in the proposed architecture to execute fault-tolerant operations. With only minor adjustments the proposed modules are also suitable for alternative trapped-ion quantum computer architectures, such as schemes using photonic interconnects.

We discuss the experimental feasibility of quantum simulation with trapped ion crystals, using magnetic field gradients. We describe a micro structured planar ion trap, which contains a central wire loop generating a strong magnetic gradient of about 20 T/m in an ion crystal held about 160 μm above the surface. On the theoretical side, we extend a proposal about spin-spin interactions via magnetic gradient induced coupling (MAGIC) [Johanning, et al, J. Phys. B: At. Mol. Opt. Phys. 42 (2009) 154009]. We describe aspects where planar ion traps promise novel physics: Spin-spin coupling strengths of transversal eigenmodes exhibit significant advantages over the coupling schemes in longitudinal direction that have been previously investigated. With a chip device and a magnetic field coil with small inductance, a resonant enhancement of magnetic spin forces through the application of alternating magnetic field gradients is proposed. Such resonantly enhanced spin-spin coupling may be used, for instance, to create Schrödinger cat states. Finally we investigate magnetic gradient interactions in two-dimensional ion crystals, and discuss frustration effects in such two-dimensional arrangements.

We demonstrate the possibility of realizing a neural network in a chain of trapped ions with induced long range interactions. Such models permit to store information distributed over the whole system. The storage capacity of such network, which depends on the phonon spectrum of the system, can be controlled by changing the external trapping potential and/or by applying longitudinal local magnetic fields. The system properties suggest the possibility of implementing robust distributed realizations of quantum logic.