Fast transport of mixed-species ion chains within a Paul trap

TL;DR

This paper develops protocols for fast, low-excitation transport of mixed-species ion chains in a Paul trap, enhancing quantum information processing efficiency by controlling multiple degrees of freedom during diabatic transport.

Contribution

It introduces invariant-based inverse-engineering methods for rapid transport of mixed-species ions, extending to longer strings, which was previously challenging due to multiple excited modes.

Findings

Protocols achieve low final excitations during fast transport

Method extends to longer mixed-species ion chains

Reduces transport time in quantum computing architectures

Abstract

We investigate the dynamics of mixed-species ion crystals during transport between spatially distinct locations in a linear Paul trap in the diabatic regime. In a general mixed-species crystal, all degrees of freedom along the direction of transport are excited by an accelerating well, so unlike the case of same-species ions, where only the center-of-mass-mode is excited, several degrees of freedom have to be simultaneously controlled by the transport protocol. We design protocols that lead to low final excitations in the diabatic regime using invariant-based inverse-engineering for two different-species ions and also show how to extend this approach to longer mixed-species ion strings. Fast transport of mixed-species ion strings can significantly reduce the time overhead in certain architectures for scalable quantum information processing with trapped ions.