Integrated chips and optical cavities for trapped ion quantum information processing

Quantum information processing is a new and exciting field which uses quantum mechanical systems to perform information processing. At the heart of the excitement are quantum computation - which promises efficient algorithms for simulating physical systems, factoring, and searching unsorted databases - and quantum communication - which provides a provably secure communications protocol. Trapped ions show much promise for achieving large-scale quantum information processing. Experiments thus far have demonstrated small algorithms and entanglement of two remote ions. Current work focuses on scaling to large numbers of ions for quantum computation and interconversion between trapped ions and photons for quantum communication. This thesis addresses some of the challenges facing scaling and interconversion for trapped ion quantum information processing. The first part of the thesis describes the development of scalable, multiplexed ion trap chips for quantum computation. The ion trap chips are based on a new ion trap geometry, called the surface-electrode trap, in which all of the electrodes reside in a single plane. Three generations of surface-electrode traps are designed, fabricated, and tested - culminating with the demonstration of an ion trap chip microfabricated using standard silicon VLSI materials and processes for scalability to small trap size and large arrays of interconnected ion traps. The second part of the thesis presents an experiment that demonstrates cavity cooling, a method of laser cooling the motional state of trapped ions without decohering the internal qubit state.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Physics.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2009

Author dc:creator

• Leibrandt, David R

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Isaac L. Chuang.

• Physics.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/53229

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/53229