Suppression of Heating Rates in Cryogenic Surface-Electrode Ion Traps

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that cooling cryogenic surface-electrode ion traps to 6 K drastically reduces heating rates by seven orders of magnitude, enabling better scalability for quantum information processing.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed characterization of cryogenic cooling effects on heating rates in surface-electrode ion traps, showing significant suppression of decoherence.

Findings

Heating rates suppressed by 7 orders of magnitude at 6 K

Cooling reduces noise significantly compared to room temperature

Fabrication process influences noise levels

Abstract

Dense arrays of trapped ions provide one way of scaling up ion trap quantum information processing. However, miniaturization of ion traps is currently limited by sharply increasing motional state decoherence at sub-100 um ion-electrode distances. We characterize heating rates in cryogenically cooled surface-electrode traps, with characteristic sizes in 75 um to 150 um range. Upon cooling to 6 K, the measured rates are suppressed by 7 orders of magnitude, two orders of magnitude below previously published data of similarly sized traps operated at room temperature. The observed noise depends strongly on fabrication process, which suggests further improvements are possible.