QUROPE Quantum Information Processing and Communication in Europe

We describe a versatile planar Penning trap structure, which allows one to dynamically modify the trapping configuration almost arbitrarily. The trap consists of 37 hexagonal electrodes, each with a circumcircle diameter of 300 μm, fabricated in a gold-on-sapphire lithographic technique. Every hexagon can be addressed individually, thus shaping the electric potential. The fabrication of such a device with clean room methods is demonstrated.

We report transport operations with linear crystals of 40Ca+ ions performed by applying complex electric time-dependent potentials. For their control we use the information obtained from the ions’ fluorescence. We demonstrate that by means of this feedback technique, we can transport a predefined number of ions and also split and unify ion crystals.

We report heating rate measurements in a microfabricated gold-on-sapphire surface electrode ion trap with trapping height of approximately 240 micron. Using the Doppler recooling method, we characterize the trap heating rates over an extended region of the trap. The noise spectral density of the trap falls in the range of noise spectra reported in ion traps at room temperature. We find that during the first months of operation the heating rates increase by approximately one order of magnitude.

Trapped laser-cooled atoms and ions are quantum systems which can be experimentally controlled with an as yet unmatched degree of precision. Due to the control of the motion and the internal degrees of freedom, these quantum systems can be adequately described by a well-known Hamiltonian. In this colloquium, powerful numerical tools for the optimization of the external control of the motional and internal states of trapped neutral atoms, explicitly applied to the case of trapped laser-cooled ions in a segmented ion-trap are presented.