Motional Squeezing for Trapped Ion Transport and Separation

Published

August 20, 2021

Author(s)

Robert Sutherland, Shaun Burd, Daniel Slichter, Stephen Libby, Dietrich Leibfried

Abstract

Transport, separation, and merging of trapped ion crystals are essential operations for most large-scale quantum computing architectures. In this Letter, we develop a theoretical framework that describes the dynamics of ions in time-varying potentials with a motional squeeze operator, followed by a motional displacement operator. Using this framework, we develop a new, general protocol for trapped ion transport, separation, and merging. We show that motional squeezing can prepare an ion wave packet to enable transfer from the ground state of one trapping potential to another. The framework and protocol are applicable if the potential is harmonic over the extent of the ion wave packets at all times. As illustrations, we discuss two specific operations: changing the strength of the confining potential for a single ion and separating same-species ions with their mutual Coulomb force. Both of these operations are, ideally, free of residual motional excitation.

Citation

Physical Review Letters

Volume

127

Pub Type

Journals

Download Paper

https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.127.083201

Local Download

Keywords

trapped ion, quantum computing

Citation

Sutherland, R. , Burd, S. , Slichter, D. , Libby, S. and Leibfried, D. (2021), Motional Squeezing for Trapped Ion Transport and Separation, Physical Review Letters, [online], https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.127.083201, https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=932030 (Accessed October 9, 2025)