Cryogenic trapped-ion system for large scale quantum simulation

Abstract

Trapped-ion systems are among themost promising hardware candidates for large scale quantum computing and quantumsimulation. In order to scale up such devices, it is necessary to engineer extremehigh vacuum(XHV) environments to prevent background gas from disrupting the ion crystal. Here we present a new cryogenic ion trapping system designed for long time storage of large ion chains. Our apparatus is based on a segmented-blade ion trap enclosed in a 4Kcryostat, which enables us to routinely trap and hold over 100 171Yb+ions for hours in a linear configuration, due to low background gas pressure from differential cryo-pumping.We characterize theXHVcryogenic environmentmeasuring pressures below10-11 Torr by recording both inelastic and elastic collisions between the ion chain and themolecular background gas.Wealso demonstrate coherent one and two-qubit operations and nearly equidistant ion spacing for chains of up to 44 ions using anharmonic axial potentials, in order to enable better detection and single ion addressing in large ion arrays.We anticipate that this reliable production and lifetime enhancement of large linear ion chainswill enable quantum simulation ofmodels that are intractable with classical computermodeling.