Demonstrating Optimal Ion Transport Protocols and Quantum Control on Surface Electrode Ion Traps

Trapped ion qubits achieve excellent coherence times and gate fidelities, well beyond the threshold for fault tolerant quantum error correction. One route towards scalability is the coherent control and transport of ions between different zones on a microfabricated surface trap. A current challenge in ion transport is speed and fidelity. The transport operations should be as fast as possible to speed up quantum computation, as well as slow (adiabatic) in order to preserve the internal qubit state. Through simulation of trapping potentials and ion dynamics, we can observe the effects of static and dynamic potentials on the ions motional state and investigate various shuttling protocols on an X-junction surface trap. We demonstrate various transport and ion-reconfiguration protocols towards fast, coherent quantum control.