Versatile surface ion trap for effective cooling and large-scale trapping of ions

Abstract

Scaling up and effective cooling of ions in surface ion trap 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 principle-axes rotation of two parallel linear ion chains, which facilitates the cooling of ions along all principle trap axes. To alleviate contaminating the manipulation zone during ion loading, a symmetric five-wire geometry is designed as the loading zone. And 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 optimal 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 also can be used as the multi-ion-mixer or the efficient ion beam splitter, which has the potential applications in quantum simulation and quantum computing, the research of 2D dimensional ion crystals and the guides of quantum microscope, like 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.