IONPEN · Trapped-ion quantum information in 2-dimensional Penning trap arrays

This project will develop a new platform for quantum computation and quantum simulation based on scalable two-dimensional arrays of ions in micro-fabricated Penning traps. It builds upon the rapid advances demonstrating high precision quantum control in micro-fabricated radio-frequency ion traps while eliminating the most problematic element - the radio-frequency potential - using a uniform magnetic field. This offers a significant advantage: since the magnetic field is uniform it provides confinement at any position for which a suitable static quadrupole can be generated. By contrast, r.f. potentials only provide good working conditions along a line. This changed perspective provides access to dense two-dimensional strongly interacting ion lattices, with the possibility to re-configure these lattices in real time. By combining closely-spaced static two-dimensional ion arrays with standard laser control methods, the project will demonstrate previously inaccessible many-body interacting spin Hamiltonians at ion numbers which are out of the reach of classical computers, providing a scalable quantum simulator with the potential to provide new insights into the links between microscopic physics and emergent behavior. Through dynamic control of electrode voltages, reconfigurable two-dimensional arrays will be used to realize a scalable quantum computing architecture, which will be benchmarked through landmark experiments on measurement-based quantum computation and high error-threshold surface codes which are natural to this configuration. Realizing multi-dimensional connectivity between qubits is a major problem facing a number of leading quantum computing architectures including trapped ions. By solving this problem, the proposed project will pave the way to large-scale universal quantum computing with impacts from fundamental physics through to chemistry, materials science and cryptography.