Hiroki Takahashi

Quantum phase estimation (QPE) is an underlying technology for extracting the excitation spectra of many-electron systems, yet its practical use on current hardware is hindered by low grid resolution and environmental noises. Here we propose QPE averaged over variable grids (QAVG), a vernier-type approach that combines low-resolution QPE with multiple origin shifts and physically motivated continuous parametrization to reconstruct the spectra accurately. We introduce this approach into an end-to-end workflow for the {\it ab initio}-based model system for a CO molecule adsorbed onto the $χ$-Fe$_5$C$_2$ surface. We perform experiments on Quantinuum H2-2 using both physical QPE circuits and logical QPE circuits encoded in the Steane code with offline bit-flip correction. We demonstrate that QAVG accurately reconstructs the spectra with deviations much smaller than the nominal QPE resolution, even when the noisy histograms are used. The cost landscapes averaged over the shifted grids substantially suppress the local minima arising from the spectral leakage, thereby stabilizing the optimization of trial parameters. These results indicate that QAVG provides a robust route to quantum simulations of correlated spectra toward the era of early-fault-tolerant quantum computers.

One method of scaling up quantum systems is to adopt a modular approach. In the ion trap architecture, an efficient photonic interface between independent linear ion traps would allow for such expansion. To this end, an optical cavity with a small mode volume can be utilised to enhance the photon emission probability from the ion. Miniature fibre-based Fabry-Perot cavities have been integrated into three-dimensional Paul traps that hold a single ion, whereas an efficient interface between an optical cavity and a linear trap that can keep multiple ions has remained elusive. This presents a barrier for combining the benefits of the motional coupling in a chain of ions with optical interface between ion traps. In this paper, we show that simple electrically conductive shielding of the fibres could provide substantial advantage in mitigating the adverse effects of stray charges and motional heating by dielectrics. We also reveal that the conductive shields are not compatible with the conventional radio frequency (rf) drive in ion traps but using two rf signals with opposite phases can solve this issue. Furthermore the role played by the symmetry of the electrodes when incorporating an element that disrupts the translational symmetry of a linear trap is elucidated analytically. As a result it is realized that two-dimensional implementation of a linear ion trap such as a surface trap is inherently not suitable for integrating a shielded miniature optical cavity due to the lack of geometrical symmetry. Based on the insights obtained through the analysis, we identify essential components and a design strategy that should be incorporated in a linear ion trap for successful integration of a miniature optical cavity.

The miniaturization of ion trap and the precise placement of its electrodes are necessary for the integration of a microcavity to facilitate efficient ion-cavity coupling. We present a miniature monolithic ion trap made of gold-coated fused silica with high numerical aperture access. A laser writing method referred to as selective laser etching is employed to extract a trap structure from a block of fused silica. The fully monolithic structure eliminates the need for any post-fabrication alignment. Trenches are integrated into this structure such that the various electrodes on the monolithic device remain electrically isolated following their metalization via evaporative coating. We give details of the trap design and production, along with the demonstration of successful trapping of ions and characerization of the trap.

We have experimentally observed the dynamics of a single polariton and two polaritons in a two-ion chain. By driving two trapped ions at a motional blue-sideband transition, we realize the anti-Jaynes-Cummings-Hubbard model. When a single polariton exists in a trapped-ion chain, the polariton hops between the ion sites. On the other hand, when there are single polaritons at each ion site, the hopping of the polaritons is suppressed because of the polariton-polariton interaction induced by the nonlinearity of the anti-Jaynes-Cummings interaction, thereby realizing the blockade of polariton hopping in the anti-Jaynes-Cummings-Hubbard model with trapped ions. Our work is a step towards the development of a trapped-ion based quantum simulator for strongly interacting polaritonic systems.

Driving an ion at a motional sideband transition induces the Jaynes--Cummings (JC) interaction. This JC interaction creates an anharmonic ladder of JC eigenstates, resulting in the suppression of phonon hopping due to energy conservation. Here, we realize phonon blockade in the presence of multiple local phonons in a trapped-ion chain. Our work establishes a key technological component for quantum simulation with multiple bosonic particles, which can simulate classically intractable problems.

Incorporating optical cavities in ion traps is becoming increasingly important in the development of photonic quantum networks. However, the presence of the cavity can hamper efficient laser cooling of ions because of geometric constraints that the cavity imposes and an unfavourable Purcell effect that can modify the cooling dynamics substantially. On the other hand the coupling of the ion to the cavity can also be exploited to provide a mechanism to efficiently cool the ion. In this paper we demonstrate experimentally how cavity cooling can be implemented to improve the localisation of the ion and thus its coupling to the cavity. By using cavity cooling we obtain an enhanced ion-cavity coupling of $2π\times (16.7\pm 0.1)$ MHz, compared with $2π\times (15.2\pm 0.1)$ MHz when using only Doppler cooling.

Strong coupling between an atom and an electromagnetic resonator is an important condition in cavity quantum electrodynamics (QED). While strong coupling in various physical systems has been achieved so far, it remained elusive for single atomic ions. In this paper we demonstrate for the first time the coupling of a single ion to an optical cavity with a coupling strength exceeding both atomic and cavity decay rates. We use cavity assisted Raman spectroscopy to precisely characterize the ion-cavity coupling strength and observe a spectrum featuring the normal mode splitting in the cavity transmission due to the ion-cavity interaction. Our work paves the way towards new applications of cavity QED utilizing single trapped ions in the strong coupling regime for quantum optics and quantum technologies.

We report a novel miniature Paul ion trap design with an integrated optical fibre cavity which can serve as a building block for a fibre-linked quantum network. In such cavity quantum electrodynamic set-ups, the optimal coupling of the ions to the cavity mode is of vital importance and this is achieved by moving the ion relative to the cavity mode. The trap presented herein features an endcap-style design complemented with extra electrodes on which additional radiofrequency voltages are applied to fully control the pseudopotential minimum in three dimensions. This method lifts the need to use three-dimensional translation stages for moving the fibre cavity with respect to the ion and achieves high integrability, mechanical rigidity and scalability. Not based on modifying the capacitive load of the trap, this method leads to precise control of the pseudopotential minimum allowing the ion to be moved with precisions limited only by the ion's position spread. We demonstrate this by coupling the ion to the fibre cavity and probing the cavity mode profile.

Trapped atomic ions are ideal single photon emitters with long lived internal states which can be entangled with emitted photons. Coupling the ion to an optical cavity enables efficient emission of single photons into a single spatial mode and grants control over their temporal shape. These features are key for quantum information processing and quantum communication. However, the photons emitted by these systems are unsuitable for long-distance transmission due to their wavelengths. Here we report the transmission of single photons from a single $^{40}\text{Ca}^{+}$ ion coupled to an optical cavity over a 10 km optical fibre via frequency conversion from 866 nm to the telecom C-band at 1,530 nm. We observe non-classical photon statistics of the direct cavity emission, the converted photons and the 10 km transmitted photons, as well as the preservation of the photons' temporal shape throughout. This telecommunication ready system can be a key component for long-distance quantum communication as well as future cloud quantum computation.

We report on the alteration of photon emission properties of a single trapped ion coupled to a high finesse optical fiber cavity. We show that the vacuum field of the cavity can simultaneously affect the emissions in both the infrared (IR) and ultraviolet (UV) branches of the $Λ-$type level system of $^{40}\mathrm{Ca}^+$ despite the cavity coupling only to the IR transition. The cavity induces strong emission in the IR transition through the Purcell effect resulting in a simultaneous suppression of the UV fluorescence. The measured suppression of this fluorescence is as large as 66% compared with the case without the cavity. Through analysis of the measurement results, we have obtained an ion-cavity coupling of $\bar{g}_0 = 2π\cdot (5.3 \pm 0.1)$ MHz, the largest ever reported so far for a single ion in the IR domain.

The Mølmer-Sørensen gate is a state-of-the-art entangling gate in the ion trap quantum computing where the gate fidelity can exceed 99\%. Here we propose an analogous implementation in the setting of cavity QED. The cavity photon mode acts as the bosonic degree of freedom in the gate in contrast of that played by a phonon mode in ion traps. This is made possible by utilising cavity assisted Raman transitions interconnecting the logical qubit states embedded in a four-level energy structure, making the "anti-Jaynes-Cummings" (AJC) term available under the rotating-wave approximation. We identify practical sources of infidelity and discuss their effects on the gate performance. Our proposal not only demonstrates an alternative entangling gate scheme but also sheds new light on the relationship between ion traps and cavity QED, in the sense that many techniques developed in the former are transferable to the latter through our framework.

We study a range of radio-frequency ion trap geometries and investigate the effect of integrating dielectric cavity mirrors on their trapping potential. We aim to identify ion trap and cavity configurations that are best suited for achieving small cavity volumes and thus large ion-photon coupling as required for scalable quantum information networks. In particular, we investigate the trapping potential distortions caused by the dielectric material of the cavity mirrors for different mirror orientations with respect to the trapping electrodes, as well as for mirror misalignment. We also analyze the effect of the mirror material properties such as dielectric constants and surface conductivity, and study the effect of surface charges on the mirrors. The smallest trapping potential distortions are found if the cavities are aligned along the major symmetry axis of the electrode geometries. These cavity configurations also appear to be the most stable with respect to any mirror misalignment.

Recent technological advances in cavity quantum electrodynamics (CQED) are paving the way to utilise multiple quantum emitters confined in a single optical cavity. In such systems it is crucially important to control the quantum mechanical coupling of individual emitters to the cavity mode. In this regard, combining ion trap technologies with CQED provides a particularly promising approach due to the well-established motional control over trapped ions. Here we experimentally demonstrate coupling of up to five trapped ions in a string to a high-finesse optical cavity. By changing the axial position and spacing of the ions in a fully deterministic manner, we systematically characterise their coupling to the cavity mode through visibility measurements of the cavity emission. In good agreement with the theoretical model, the results demonstrate that the geometrical configuration of multiple trapped ions can be manipulated to obtain optimal cavity coupling. Our system presents a new ground to explore CQED with multiple quantum emitters, enabled by the highly controllable collective light-matter interaction.

We present a novel method of machining optical fiber surfaces with a CO${}_2$ laser for use in Fiber-based Fabry-Perot Cavities (FFPCs). Previously FFPCs were prone to large birefringence and limited to relatively short cavity lengths ($\le$ 200 $μ$m). These characteristics hinder their use in some applications such as cavity quantum electrodynamics with trapped ions. We optimized the laser machining process to produce large, uniform surface structures. This enables the cavities to achieve high finesse even for long cavity lengths. By rotating the fibers around their axis during the laser machining process the asymmetry resulting from the laser's transverse mode profile is eliminated. Consequently we are able to fabricate fiber mirrors with a high degree of rotational symmetry, leading to remarkably low birefringence. Through measurements of the cavity finesse over a range of cavity lengths and the polarization dependence of the cavity linewidth, we confirmed the quality of the produced fiber mirrors for use in low-birefringence FFPCs.

We have realized a compact system to efficiently couple the fluorescent light emitted by a single trapped ion to two opposing optical fibers. The fibers are tightly integrated in the center electrodes of a miniature endcap trap. They capture light from the ion with a numerical aperture of 0.34 each, corresponding to 6% of the solid angle in total. The high collection efficiency and high signal-to-background ratio make the setup an ideal quantum light source. We have observed strong antibunching of the photons emitted from the two fibers. The system has a range of applications from single-ion state detection in quantum information processing to strong coupling cavity-QED with ions.