Experimental Considerations When Using Optical Forces to Control the Motional Mode Structure of an Ion Chain

Ion traps are a leading platform for quantum computing due to their long coherence times and high fidelity control. A chain of ions provides any-to-any connectivity through its motional mode structure; as the number of ions in a chain increases, the number of motional modes of the ion chain increases and the frequency separation between these modes becomes densely packed. The ability to quickly change the eigenvectors and eigenfrequencies of these motional modes of ion chains would be useful to parallelize operations, speed up cooling, and scale up ion traps in general. We explore the use of one beam on two adjacent ions and the resulting mode structure changes. We will discuss the experimental limitations to realizing these optical forces by looking at laser misalignment, power requirements, timescales, and heating rates as well as the use of structured beams as a potential solution to these limitations.