We discuss a new direction in the field of quantum information processing with neutral atoms. It is based on the use of microfabricated optical elements. With these elements versatile and integrated atom optical devices can be created in a compact fashion. This approach opens the possibility to scale, parallelize, and miniaturize atom optics for new investigations in fundamental research and applications towards quantum computing with neutral atoms. The exploitation of the unique features of the quantum mechanical behavior of matter waves and the capabilities of powerful state-of-the-art micro- and nanofabrication techniques lend this approach a special attraction.
We introduce a new direction in the field of atom optics, atom interferometry, and neutral-atom quantum information processing. It is based on the use of microfabricated optical elements. With these elements versatile and integrated atom optical devices can be created in a compact fashion. This approach opens the possibility to scale, parallelize, and miniaturize atom optics for new investigations in fundamental research and application. It will lead to new, compact sources of ultracold atoms, compact sensors based on matter wave interference and new approaches towards quantum computing with n…
We describe a novel monolithic ion trap that combines the flexibility and scalability of silicon microfabrication technologies with the superior trapping characteristics of traditional four-rod Paul traps. The performace of the proposed microfabricated trap approaches that of the macroscopic structures. The fabrication process creates an angled through-chip slot which allows backside ion loading and through-laser access while avoiding surface light scattering and dielectric charging. The trap geometry and dimensions are optimized for confining long ion chains with equal ion spacing [G.-D. Lin,…
We demonstrate confinement of individual atomic ions in a radio-frequency Paul trap with a novel geometry where the electrodes are located in a single plane and the ions confined above this plane. This device is realized with a relatively simple fabrication procedure and has important implications for quantum state manipulation and quantum information processing using large numbers of ions. We confine laser-cooled Mg-24 ions approximately 40 micrometer above planar gold electrodes. We measure the ions' motional frequencies and compare them to simulations. From measurements of the escape time o…
Trapped ions are a leading system for realizing quantum information processing (QIP). Most of the technologies required for implementing large-scale trapped-ion QIP have been demonstrated, with one key exception: a massively parallel ion-photon interconnect. Arrays of microfabricated phase Fresnel lenses (PFL) are a promising interconnect solution that is readily integrated with ion trap arrays for large-scale QIP. Here we show the first imaging of trapped ions with a microfabricated in-vacuum PFL, demonstrating performance suitable for scalable QIP. A single ion fluorescence collection effici…
We describe the design, fabrication and testing of a surface-electrode ion trap, which incorporates microwave waveguides, resonators and coupling elements for the manipulation of trapped ion qubits using near-field microwaves. The trap is optimised to give a large microwave field gradient to allow state-dependent manipulation of the ions' motional degrees of freedom, the key to multiqubit entanglement. The microwave field near the centre of the trap is characterised by driving hyperfine transitions in a single laser-cooled 43Ca+ ion.
We investigate the use of integrated, microfabricated photonic-atomic junctions for quantum information processing applications. The coupling between atoms and light is enhanced by using microscopic optics without the need for cavity enhancement. Qubits that are collectively encoded in hyperfine states of small ensembles of optically trapped atoms, coupled via the Rydberg blockade mechanism, seem a particularly promising implementation. Fast and high-fidelity gate operations, efficient readout, long coherence times and large numbers of qubits are all possible.
We report on the design, fabrication, and preliminary testing of a 150 zone array built in a `surface-electrode' geometry microfabricated on a single substrate. We demonstrate transport of atomic ions between legs of a `Y'-type junction and measure the in-situ heating rates for the ions. The trap design demonstrates use of a basic component design library that can be quickly assembled to form structures optimized for a particular experiment.
Atomic ions trapped in ultra-high vacuum form an especially well-understood and useful physical system for quantum information processing. They provide excellent shielding of quantum information from environmental noise, while strong, well-controlled laser interactions readily provide quantum logic gates. A number of basic quantum information protocols have been demonstrated with trapped ions. Much current work aims at the construction of large-scale ion-trap quantum computers using complex microfabricated trap arrays. Several groups are also actively pursuing quantum interfacing of trapped io…
Recent advances in quantum information processing with trapped ions have demonstrated the need for new ion trap architectures capable of holding and manipulating chains of many (>10) ions. Here we present the design and detailed characterization of a new linear trap, microfabricated with scalable complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) techniques, that is well-suited to this challenge. Forty-four individually controlled DC electrodes provide the many degrees of freedom required to construct anharmonic potential wells, shuttle ions, merge and split ion chains, precisely tune secular mode…
The majority of microfabricated ion traps in use for quantum information processing are of the 2D 'surface-electrode' type or of the 3D 'wafer' type. Surface-electrode traps greatly simplify fabrication and hold the promise of allowing trapped-ion quantum computers to scale via standard semiconductor industry fabrication techniques. However, their geometry constrains them to having much lower trapping efficiency, depth, and harmonicity compared to 3D geometries. Conversely 3D geometries offer superior trap performance but fabrication is more complex, limiting potential to scale. We describe ne…
Oscillating magnetic fields and field gradients can be used to implement single-qubit rotations and entangling multi-qubit quantum gates for trapped-ion quantum information processing (QIP). With fields generated by currents in microfabricated surface-electrode traps, it should be possible to achieve gate speeds that are comparable to those of optically induced gates for realistic distances between the ion crystal and the electrode surface. Magnetic-field-mediated gates have the potential to significantly reduce the overhead in laser beam control and motional state initialization compared to c…
Individual-qubit addressing is a prerequisite for many instances of quantum information processing. We demonstrate this capability on trapped-ion qubits with microwave near-fields delivered by electrode structures integrated into a microfabricated surface-electrode trap. We describe four approaches that may be used in quantum information experiments with hyperfine levels as qubits. We implement individual control on two 25Mg+ ions separated by 4.3 micrometer and find spin-flip crosstalk errors on the order of 10^(-3).
A microfabricated Fabry-Perot optical resonator has been used for atom detection and photon production with less than 1 atom on average in the cavity mode. Our cavity design combines the intrinsic scalability of microfabrication processes with direct coupling of the cavity field to single-mode optical waveguides or fibers. The presence of the atom is seen through changes in both the intensity and the noise characteristics of probe light reflected from the cavity input mirror. An excitation laser passing transversely through the cavity triggers photon emission into the cavity mode and hence int…
In superconducting quantum information, machined aluminum superconducting cavities have proven to be a well-controlled, low-dissipation electromagnetic environment for quantum circuits such as qubits. They can possess large internal quality factors, $Q_{int}>10^8$, and present the possibility of storing quantum information for times far exceeding those of microfabricated circuits. However, in order to be useful as a storage element, these cavities require a fast "read/write" mechanism--- in other words, they require tunable coupling between other systems of interest such as other cavity modes …
Typical elements of quantum networks are made by identical systems, which are the basic particles constituting a resource for quantum information processing. Whether the indistinguishability due to particle identity is an exploitable quantum resource remains an open issue. Here we study independently prepared identical particles showing that, when they spatially overlap, an operational entanglement exists which can be made manifest by means of separated localized measurements. We prove this entanglement is physical in that it can be directly exploited to activate quantum information protocols,…
We develop an intuitive model of 2D microwave near-fields in the unusual regime of centimeter waves localized to tens of microns. Close to an intensity minimum, a simple effective description emerges with five parameters which characterize the strength and spatial orientation of the zero and first order terms of the near-field, as well as the field polarization. Such a field configuration is realized in a microfabricated planar structure with an integrated microwave conductor operating near 1 GHz. We use a single 9Be+ ion as a high-resolution quantum sensor to measure the field distribution th…
A new method of quantum state tomography for quantum information processing is described. The method based on two-dimensional Fourier transform technique involves detection of all the off-diagonal elements of the density matrix in a two-dimensional experiment. All the diagonal elements are detected in another one-dimensional experiment. The method is efficient and applicable to a wide range of spin systems. The proposed method is explained using a 2 qubit system and demonstrated by tomographing arbitrary complex density matrices of 2 and 4 qubit systems using simulations.
Arrays of trapped atoms are the ideal starting point for developing registers comprising large numbers of physical qubits for storing and processing quantum information. One very promising approach involves neutral atom traps produced on microfabricated devices known as atom chips, as almost arbitrary trap configurations can be realised in a robust and compact package. Until now, however, atom chip experiments have focused on small systems incorporating single or only a few individual traps. Here we report experiments on a two-dimensional array of trapped ultracold atom clouds prepared using a…
We review the field of Quantum Optical Information from elementary considerations through to quantum computation schemes. We illustrate our discussion with descriptions of experimental demonstrations of key communication and processing tasks from the last decade and also look forward to the key results likely in the next decade. We examine both discrete (single photon) type processing as well as those which employ continuous variable manipulations. The mathematical formalism is kept to the minimum needed to understand the key theoretical and experimental results.
We propose a new way of implementing several elementary quantum gates for qubits in the coherent state basis. The operations are probabilistic and employ single photon subtractions as the driving force. Our schemes for single-qubit phase gate and two-qubit controlled phase gate are capable of achieving arbitrarily large phase shifts with currently available resources, which makes them suitable for the near-future tests of quantum information processing with superposed coherent states.
We propose a linear optical scheme for the teleportation of unknown ionic states, the entanglement concentration for nonmaximally entangled states for ions via entanglement swapping and the remote preparation for ionic entangled states. The unique advantage of the scheme is that the joint Bell-state measurement needed in the previous schemes is not needed in the current scheme, i.e. the joint Bell-state measurement has been converted into the product of separate measurements on single ions and photons. In addition, the current scheme can realize the quantum information processes for ions by us…
We propose a dipole-force linear waveguide which confines neutral atoms up to lambda/2 above a microfabricated single-mode dielectric optical guide. The optical guide carries far blue-detuned light in the horizontally-polarized TE mode and far red-detuned light in the vertically-polarized TM mode, with both modes close to optical cut-off. A trapping minimum in the transverse plane is formed above the optical guide due to the differing evanescent decay lengths of the two modes. This design allows manufacture of mechanically stable atom-optical elements on a substrate. We calculate the full vect…
We show how optically-driven coupled quantum dots can be used to prepare maximally entangled Bell and Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger states. Manipulation of the strength and duration of the selective light-pulses needed for producing these highly entangled states provides us with crucial elements for the processing of solid-state based quantum information. Theoretical predictions suggest that several hundred single quantum bit rotations and Controlled-Not gates could be performed before decoherence of the excitonic states takes place.
Some beautiful identities involving hook contents of Young diagrams have been found in the field of quantum information processing, along with a combinatorial proof. We here give a representation theoretic proof of these identities and a number of generalizations. Our proof is based on trace identities for elements belonging to a class of permutation centralizer algebras. These algebras have been found to underlie the combinatorics of composite gauge invariant operators in quantum field theory, with applications in the AdS/CFT correspondence. Based on these algebras, we discuss some analogies …
