Reinhold Blümel

Quantum computing is currently limited by the cost of two-qubit entangling operations. In order to scale up quantum processors and achieve a quantum advantage, it is crucial to economize on the power requirement of two-qubit gates, make them robust to drift in experimental parameters, and shorten the gate times. In this paper, we present two methods, one exact and one approximate, to construct optimal pulses for entangling gates on a pair of ions within a trapped ion chain, one of the leading quantum computing architectures. Our methods are direct, non-iterative, and linear, and can construct gate-steering pulses requiring less power than the standard method by more than an order of magnitude in some parameter regimes. The power savings may generally be traded for reduced gate time and greater qubit connectivity. Additionally, our methods provide increased robustness to mode drift. We illustrate these trade-offs on a trapped-ion quantum computer.

Efficiently entangling pairs of qubits is essential to fully harness the power of quantum computing. Here, we devise an exact protocol that simultaneously entangles arbitrary pairs of qubits on a trapped-ion quantum computer. The protocol requires classical computational resources polynomial in the system size, and very little overhead in the quantum control compared to a single-pair case. We demonstrate an exponential improvement in both classical and quantum resources over the current state of the art. We implement the protocol on a software-defined trapped-ion quantum computer, where we reconfigure the quantum computer architecture on demand. Together with the all-to-all connectivity available in trapped-ion quantum computers, our results establish that trapped ions are a prime candidate for a scalable quantum computing platform with minimal quantum latency.

Small ion crystals in a Paul trap are stable even in the absence of laser cooling. Based on this theoretically and experimentally well-established fact we propose the following diagnostic criterion for establishing the presence of a crystallized beam: Absence of heating following the shut-down of all cooling devices. The validity of the criterion is checked with the help of detailed numerical simulations.