2D trapped ion quantum information processing

We investigate scalable ion trap architectures for quantum computing, where independent ion registers are located in individual lattice sites (or potential wells) in a 2D array of RF traps. The individual ion strings are coupled via their dipole-dipole interaction. Full 2D connectivity is achieved by tuning the distance between adjacent potential wells along two orthogonal directions: One direction (axial) is achieved controlling DC voltages, and the other (radial) controlling RF fields. In this work we demonstrate the building blocks of such an architecture using two surface ion traps. With the first, we demonstrate DC shuttling-based well-to-well coupling rates up to 40 kHz, and phonon exchange between ion strings at the quantum level. With the second, we characterize transport of ions along the radial direction, and measure well-to-well coupling rates up to 15 kHz. These results provide an important insight into the implementation of fully controllable 2D ion trap lattices, and pave the way to the realization of 2D logical encoding of qubits.