Enhanced trapped-ion laser cooling and quantum gate operations in spatially tailored light fields

Integrated photonic systems offer routes to addressing bottlenecks in scale and fidelity of trapped-ion quantum systems. The pointing and phase stability and design flexibility afforded by waveguide optics further enables delivery of spatially varying field profiles with high passive stability [1]. This enables practical tailoring of atom-light interaction, and as I will discuss, may provide opportunity for significant enhancements in laser cooling and coherent quantum gates, both significant bottlenecks to operation time and complexity in state-of-the-art systems for quantum computation. I will present theoretically predicted performance of mechanisms leveraging tailored light fields for laser cooling at increased rates and final cooling limits as well as fast, high-fidelity quantum logic, and our progress towards experimental exploration of these techniques.

[1] A.R. Vasquez, et al. "Control of an atomic quadrupole transition in a phase-stable standing wave." Physical Review Letters 130 (13), 133201 (2023).