The Sound of Ions: Using Trapped Atomic Ion Motion for Quantum Computation and Sensing
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Date
2024-08-07
Authors
Metzner, Jeremy
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
University of Oregon
Abstract
Encoding qubits in the electronic states of atoms has enabled the ability toperform computations, sense the environment, and gain a deeper understanding of
other physical systems through quantum simulation. In the trapped ion platform,
each of these applications is made possible, or enhanced by coupling the qubit to
the motion of the trapped ions. The motion can be used to do more than just
mediate interactions with qubits and is itself a resource for computation, sensing
and simulation. The work presented here focuses on methods for manipulation
and entanglement of trapped ion motional states in a spin-independent way while
retaining the spin to enable measurement of the quantum state of the motion.
We have shown the ability to use a set of spin-independent operations including
displacement, beam splitter, squeezing and two-mode squeezing, to sense the phase
of the oscillator states with precision exceeding the standard quantum limit (SQL)
by up to 5.9 dB and approaching the ultimate Cram´er-Rao bound. With qubits
still generally required for utilizing the motional states for quantum information
experiments, qubit measurement makes it difficult to preserve any motional state
during state detection. We have developed the technique of encoding both states in
a metastable manifold which could enable methods to preserve particular motional
states of longer-chains during state detection. We present preliminary results
demonstrating this preservation of motional states using a mixed atomic-species
trap at Lincoln Lab. The metastable encoding also provides the unique ability to
engineer and explore non-Hermitian qubit Hamiltonians, where we have shown the
ability to break the quantum speed limit.
Description
Keywords
quantum computing, quantum sensing, Trapped ions