100-Fold Reduction of Electric-Field Noise in an Ion Trap Cleanded with In Situ Argon-Ion-Beam Bombardment

Published

September 7, 2012

Author(s)

Dustin Hite, Yves Colombe, Andrew C. Wilson, Kenton R. Brown, Ulrich J. Warring, Robert Jordens, John D. Jost, David P. Pappas, Dietrich Leibfried, David J. Wineland, Kyle McKay

Abstract

Anomalous heating of trapped atomic ions is a major obstacle to their use as quantum bits in scalable quantum computers. The physical origin of this electric field noise is not fully understood, but experimental evidence suggests that it emanates from the surface of the trap electrodes. In this study, we have investigated the role that adsorbates play by identifying contaminant overlayers, developing an in situ Ar⁺- beam cleaning procedure, and measuring ion heating rates before and after cleaning the trap electrodes' surfaces. We find a reduction of two orders of magnitude in heating rate after cleaning.

Citation

Physical Review Letters

Volume

109

Pub Type

Journals

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Keywords

Atomic spectroscopy, Electric noise, Quantum computation, Quantum information processing, Quantum measurement, Trapped ions

Citation

Hite, D. , Colombe, Y. , Wilson, A. , Brown, K. , Warring, U. , Jordens, R. , Jost, J. , Pappas, D. , Leibfried, D. , Wineland, D. and McKay, K. (2012), 100-Fold Reduction of Electric-Field Noise in an Ion Trap Cleanded with In Situ Argon-Ion-Beam Bombardment, Physical Review Letters, [online], https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=910379 (Accessed October 1, 2025)