Towards qutrit and qudit manipulations with trapped Ba+ ions

Multi-level qudits have many potential applications in quantum simulation and quantum computation, and are relatively underexplored compared to the well understood trapped ion qubits. Ba+ ions, including the rare radioactive isotope Ba-133+, are a promising candidate to host qutrits or qudits. In this talk I will present our group's progress toward implementing a state-measurement protocol on a Ba+ qutrit, and describe the optical infrastructure required for full qutrit and qudit manipulations. I also touch on our developments with regards to producing more robust atomic sources for Ba-133+.