Henri Lehec

We present an alternative approach for interconnecting trapped ion processor nodes by a deterministic single ion transfer out of the trap, into a free space trajectory, followed by recapture in the trapping potential. Our experimental realization yields a success probability of 95.1%, namely 715 out of 752 extracted ions are retrapped, cooled and observed after a transport distance of 110mm and a time of flight of 7 $μ$s. Based on the near-unity operation success, we discuss its application for scalable ion trap quantum computing and advanced quantum sensing.

A single $^{40}$Ca ion is confine in the harmonic potential of a Paul trap and cooled to a temperature of a few mK, with a wave packet of sub-m spatial and sub-m/s velocity uncertainty. Deterministically extracted from the Paul trap, the single ion is propagating over a distance of 0.27 m and detected. By engineering the ion extraction process on the initial wave packet, theoretically modeling the ion trajectories, and studying experimentally the time-of-flight distribution, we directly infer the state of the previously trapped ion. This analysis allows for accurate remote sensing of the previous motional excitation in the trap potential, both coherently or incoherently. Our method paves a way to extract, manipulate and design quantum wave packets also outside of the Paul trap.