Ion Coulomb Crystals in Storage Rings for Quantum Information Science

TL;DR

This paper explores the potential of using ion Coulomb crystals in storage rings as a scalable, fault-tolerant platform for quantum computing, which could significantly advance quantum information processing capabilities.

Contribution

It proposes a novel concept of a Storage Ring Quantum Computer (SRQC) utilizing ion Coulomb crystals for large-scale, long-coherence qubits in a circular ion trap system.

Findings

Potential to create thousands of long-coherence qubits

Design of a large-scale ion trap storage ring

Proposal for a scalable, fault-tolerant quantum system

Abstract

Quantum information science is a growing field that promises to take computing into a new age of higher performance and larger scale computing as well as being capable of solving problems classical computers are incapable of solving. The outstanding issue in practical quantum computing today is scaling up the system while maintaining interconnectivity of the qubits and low error rates in qubit operations to be able to implement error correction and fault-tolerant operations. Trapped ion qubits offer long coherence times that allow error correction. However, error correction algorithms require large numbers of qubits to work properly. We can potentially create many thousands (or more) of qubits with long coherence states in a storage ring. For example, a circular radio-frequency quadrupole, which acts as a large circular ion trap and could enable larger scale quantum computing. Such a Storage Ring Quantum Computer (SRQC) would be a scalable and fault tolerant quantum information system, composed of qubits with very long coherence lifetimes. With computing demands potentially outpacing the supply of high-performance systems, quantum computing could bring innovation and scientific advances to particle physics and other DOE supported programs. Increased support of R$\&$D in large scale ion trap quantum computers would allow the timely exploration of this exciting new scalable quantum computer. The R$\&$D program could start immediately at existing facilities and would include the design and construction of a prototype SRQC. We invite feedback from and collaboration with the particle physics and quantum information science communities.