Z. Wu

This paper presents a routine to align an optical tweezer on a single trapped ion and use the ion as a probe to characterize the tweezer. We find a smallest tweezer waist of $2.3(2)\,μ$m, which is in agreement with the theoretical minimal attainable waist of $2.5(2)\,μ$m in our setup. We characterize the spatial dependence of the tweezer Rabi frequency which is suppressed by a factor of 19(3) in the immediate surrounding of the ion. We investigate the effects of optical forces and coherent population trapping on the ion. Finally, we show that the challenges posed by these forces can be overcome, and that the number of tweezers can be easily scaled up to reach several ions by using a spatial light modulator.

We propose a new scalable architecture for trapped ion quantum computing that combines optical tweezers delivering qubit state-dependent local potentials with oscillating electric fields. Since the electric field allows for long-range qubit-qubit interactions mediated by the center-of-mass motion of the ion crystal alone, it is inherently scalable to large ion crystals. Furthermore, our proposed scheme does not rely on either ground state cooling or the Lamb-Dicke approximation. We study the effects of imperfect cooling of the ion crystal, as well as the role of unwanted qubit-motion entanglement, and discuss the prospects of implementing the state-dependent tweezers in the laboratory.

We report observations of the acceleration and trapping of energetic ions and electrons between a pair of corotating interaction regions (CIRs). The event occurred in Carrington Rotation 2060. Observed at spacecraft STEREO-B, the two CIRs were separated by less than 5 days. In contrast to other CIR events, the fluxes of energetic ions and electrons in this event reached their maxima between the trailing-edge of the first CIR and the leading edge of the second CIR. The radial magnetic field (Br) reversed its sense and the anisotropy of the flux also changed from sunward to anti-sunward between the two CIRs. Furthermore, there was an extended period of counter-streaming suprathermal electrons between the two CIRs. Similar observations for this event were also obtained for ACE and STEREO-A. We conjecture that these observations were due to a "U-shape" large scale magnetic field topology connecting the reverse shock of the first CIR and the forward shock of the second CIR. Such a disconnected U-shaped magnetic field topology may have formed due to magnetic reconnection in the upper corona.