Coherent Diabatic Ion Transport and Separation in a Multizone Trap Array
R. Bowler, John Gaebler, Yiheng Lin, Ting Rei Tan, David Hanneke, John D. Jost, Jonathan Home, D. Leibfried, David J. Wineland · Physical Review Letters · 2012
We investigate the dynamics of single and multiple ions during transport between and separation into spatially distinct locations in a multizone linear Paul trap. A single $^{9}\mathrm{Be}^{+}$ ion in a $\ensuremath{\sim}2\text{ }\text{ }\mathrm{MHz}$ harmonic well was transported $370\text{ }\text{ }\ensuremath{\mu}\mathrm{m}$ in $8\text{ }\text{ }\ensuremath{\mu}\mathrm{s}$, corresponding to 16 periods of oscillation, with a gain of 0.1 motional quanta. Similar results were achieved for the transport of two ions. We also separated chains of up to 9 ions from one potential well to two distinct potential wells. With two ions this was accomplished in $55\text{ }\text{ }\ensuremath{\mu}\mathrm{s}$, with excitations of approximately two quanta for each ion. Fast transport and separation can significantly reduce the time overhead in certain architectures for scalable quantum information processing with trapped ions.