Trapped ion quantum computers: challenges and opportunities

At the Duke Quantum Center, we have designed and built multiple generations of state-of-the-art research quantum computer systems. By using long chains of ions and optical addressing, we achieve all-to-all connectivity of the ion qubits with a broad and highly expressive set of multi-qubit gate operations. Earlier systems (upon which subsequent design is based) have shown high fidelity gates on 20+ fully connected qubits, with demonstrated applications in error correction and other algorithms. In this talk, I will highlight recent system development as well as plans for future quantum computing and simulation devices. I will also discuss plans for scaling up to many qubits and how we might address challenges to doing so.