All Abstracts | Poster Abstracts | Talk Abstracts

Trapped-ion quantum information processing experiments at NIST

John Gaebler, National Institute of Standards and Technology

(Session 1 : Thursday from 9:15am - 9:45am)

We report experiments towards scalable quantum information processing with laser-cooled trapped ions. Quantum information is stored in internal (hyperfine ground) states of ions and gate operations are performed with laser and microwave fields. We describe the current status of quantum information experiments using multi-zone trap arrays to investigate the basic tasks of a quantum information processor including transport of ions between zones and sympathetic cooling. In one recent experiment we created an entangled steady state of two trapped ions using dissipation. The steady state can be maintained for a duration of several times the entanglement generation duration and the entanglement fidelity is currently limited by identified technical issues. We also briefly describe recent progress with other quantum-information-focused experiments in our group including the generation of entanglement between two ions held in distinct but coupled trap zones, efforts to reduce the electric field noise from trap surfaces, superconducting photon detectors and junctions for switching the transport pathway of ions in multi-zone traps structures. *This work is supported by IARPA, ONR, and the NIST Quantum Information Program.