Mahmood Irtiza Hussain

Experimental realizations of two qubit entangling gates with trapped ions typically rely on addressing spectroscopically resolved motional sidebands, limiting gate speed to the secular frequency. Fast entangling gates using ultrafast pulsed lasers overcome this speed limit. This approach is based on state-dependent photon recoil kicks from a sequence of counter-propagating, resonant, ultrafast pulse pairs, which can allow sub-microsecond gate speeds. Here we demonstrate a key component of the ultrafast gate protocol, the coherent excitation of a 171Yb+ ion across the 2S1/2-2P1/2 transition with a single near-resonant short optical pulse at 369.53 nm. We achieve a maximum population transfer of 94.3(6)% using a picosecond pulsed laser that can be tuned across the 2S1/2-2P1/2 transition, and 42.53(13)% with 190(7) GHz detuning.

Trapped ions are one of the most promising approaches for the realization of a universal quantum computer. Faster quantum logic gates could dramatically improve the performance of trapped-ion quantum computers, and require the development of suitable high repetition rate pulsed lasers. Here we report on a robust frequency upconverted fiber laser based source, able to deliver 2.5 ps ultraviolet (UV) pulses at a stabilized repetition rate of 300.00000 MHz with an average power of 190 mW. The laser wavelength is resonant with the strong transition in Ytterbium (Yb+) at 369.53 nm and its repetition rate can be scaled up using high harmonic mode locking. We show that our source can produce arbitrary pulse patterns using a programmable pulse pattern generator and fast modulating components. Finally, simulations demonstrate that our laser is capable of performing resonant, temperature-insensitive, two-qubit quantum logic gates on trapped Yb$^+$ ions faster than the trap period and with fidelity above 99%.