Versatile surface ion trap with fork junction for effective cooling

Abstract

Scaling up and effective cooling of ions in surface ion traps are central challenges in quantum computing and quantum simulation with trapped ions. In this theoretical study, we propose a versatile surface ion trap. In the manipulation zone of our trap, a symmetric seven-wire geometry enables innate principal axes rotation of two parallel linear ion chains, which facilitates the cooling of ions along all principal axes of the trap. To alleviate contaminating the manipulation zone during ion loading, a symmetric five-wire (FW) geometry is designed as the loading zone. Moreover, a ‘fork junction’ connects the loading and manipulation zones, which also enables the shuttling and reordering of ions. A multi-objective optimization procedure suitable for arbitrary junction designs is described in detail, and we present the corresponding optimization results for the key components of our trap. The proposed versatile trap can be used in the construction of large-scale ion quantum processors. The trap can also be used as the multi-ion-mixer or the efficient ion beam splitter, which has potential applications in quantum simulation and quantum computing; further, it can be used for the research of two-dimensional ion crystals and can act as guides of quantum microscopes, such as for an electron beam splitter used for quantum matter-wave optics experiments. Interesting topics involving the spin–spin interactions between two ion chains can also be simulated in our trap.