Design and Fabrication of Metal-Shielded Fiber-Cavity Mirrors for Ion-Trap Systems

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel metal-shielded mirror design for ion-trap micro-cavities, significantly improving ion trapping stability and reducing heating rates, thereby advancing scalable quantum network technology.

Contribution

It presents a new fabrication technique for metal-shielded micro-cavity mirrors that enhances ion trap stability and reduces heating, enabling integrated ion-photon quantum interfaces.

Findings

Successful stable trapping of a single ion within the cavity.

Ion heating rate reduced by over an order of magnitude.

Demonstrated integration of fiber Fabry-Perot cavity with ion trap.

Abstract

Trapped ions in micro-cavities constitute a key platform for advancing quantum information processing and quantum networking. By providing an efficient light-matter interface within a compact architecture, they serve as highly efficient quantum nodes with strong potential for scalable quantum network. However, in such systems, ion trapping stability is often compromised by surface charging effects, and nearby dielectric materials are known to cause a dramatic increase in the ion heating rate by several orders of magnitude. These challenges significantly hinder the practical implementation of ion trap systems integrated with micro-cavities. To overcome these limitations, we present the design and fabrication of metal-shielded micro-cavity mirrors, enabling the stable realization of ion trap systems integrated with micro cavities. Using this method, we constructed a needle ion trap integrated with fiber Fabry-Perot cavity and successfully achieved stable trapping of a single ion within the cavity. The measured ion heating rate was reduced by more than an order of magnitude compared with unshielded configurations. This work establishes a key technique toward fully integrated ion-photon interfaces for scalable quantum network.