Cryogenic silicon surface ion trap

TL;DR

This paper presents cryogenically operated silicon ion traps fabricated with standard semiconductor techniques, demonstrating low heating rates and long ion lifetimes, advancing scalable quantum computing with trapped ions.

Contribution

It introduces a practical method for fabricating cryogenic silicon ion traps with low heating rates, enabling scalable quantum information processing.

Findings

Heating rates as low as 0.33 phonons/s at 230 μm distance

Long ion lifetimes observed in cryogenic silicon traps

Rapid and reliable fabrication using standard semiconductor technology

Abstract

Trapped ions are pre-eminent candidates for building quantum information processors and quantum simulators. They have been used to demonstrate quantum gates and algorithms, quantum error correction, and basic quantum simulations. However, to realise the full potential of such systems and make scalable trapped-ion quantum computing a reality, there exist a number of practical problems which must be solved. These include tackling the observed high ion-heating rates and creating scalable trap structures which can be simply and reliably produced. Here, we report on cryogenically operated silicon ion traps which can be rapidly and easily fabricated using standard semiconductor technologies. Single $^{40}$Ca$^+$ ions have been trapped and used to characterize the trap operation. Long ion lifetimes were observed with the traps exhibiting heating rates as low as $\dot{\bar{n}}=$ 0.33 phonons/s at an ion-electrode distance of 230 $\mu$m. These results open many new avenues to arrays of micro-fabricated ion traps.