Optimizing Voltage Waveforms for Ion-Shuttling Operations

Trapped ions are a promising candidate for quantum information processing and quantum sensing. As experiments with ions increase in size and complexity, a trap array-based architecture for an ion trap with many independent zones is a promising approach. A crucial element in the operation of a trap array is the ability to split, move and recombine chains of ions on diabatic timescales and without incurring excessive decoherence of information stored in ion qubits. Here, we present an end-to-end numerical simulation pipeline of the ion shuttling process to optimize voltage waveforms that are pre-compensated for voltage-generation electronics, vacuum-system wiring, and electrode filtering. We simulate robust protocols generated with Shortcuts-to-Adiabaticity principles and compare the results with experimental results achieved using precision-timing, high-speed hardware. We run diabatic splitting experiments on an ion trap tailored to providing a large quartic confinement. The software and protocols presented here may provide a new standard method for optimizing voltage waveforms in future ion-shuttling experiments.