Rare Earth Ions Doped Mixed Crystals for Fast Quantum Computers with Optical Frequency Qubits

TL;DR

This paper explores the use of highly doped mixed crystals with rare earth ions as a platform for fast quantum computers utilizing optical frequency qubits, highlighting the potential for high speed and long coherence times.

Contribution

It proposes a novel approach using the electronic 4f states of rare earth ions as optical qubits and demonstrates how to perform quantum gate operations via Stark blockade.

Findings

Quadrupole-quadrupole interaction causes Stark blockade.

High inhomogeneous broadening enables high computation rates.

Weak electron-phonon interaction extends decoherence time.

Abstract

The possibility of using mixed crystals highly doped with rare earth ions (REIs) as physical systems for creating fast quantum computers with a sampling time of nanoseconds is discussed. The electronic 4f states of rare earth ions with small values of the diagonal elements of the Judd-Ofelt matrix U(2) are proposed as optical frequency qubit levels. CNOT and other conditional gate operations are performed by exciting the rare earth ion into the 4f state with a large diagonal element of U(2), causing a Stark blockade. It is found that the main interaction responsible for this blockade is the quadrupole-quadrupole interaction. The large inhomogeneous broadening of the frequencies of the electronic transitions in mixed crystals and the weak interaction of 4f electrons with phonons make it possible to achieve a high computation rate and a long decoherence time of the qubits. An ensemble of closest REIs is described that can act as an OQC instance; the frequencies of the corresponding qubits can be found using the spectral hole burning method.