Assembling a Ring-Shaped Crystal in a Microfabricated Surface Ion Trap
Boyan Tabakov, Francisco Benito, Matthew G. Blain, Craig Robert Clark, Susan Clark, Raymond A. Haltli, Peter Maunz, Jonathan David Sterk, Chris P. Tigges, Daniel Stick · Physical Review Applied · 2015
Using an ensemble of ions to register one qubit each, the so-called trapped ion quantum computer could serve as a universal computing machine, with the advantages in speed and power that a quantum device could bring. However, actually making a suitably large trap is far from trivial. The authors microfabricate a ring-shaped ion trap and demonstrate its storage of 400 evenly spaced calcium ions. Its circularly symmetric trapping potential furthermore enables fundamental experiments on e.g. simulated Hawking radiation or the Aharonov-Bohm effect.