arXiv · 2607.24050
Pound-Drever-Hall Feedforward for Trapped-Ion Optical Qubits
Abstract
Laser phase noise is one of the limiting factors that dictate gate fidelities and coherence times in trapped-ion quantum systems. Previous studies have reported that when the Rabi frequency of an ion qubit is close to the servo-bump phase-noise frequency, the driving laser limits the fidelity and coherence time. This issue has typically been mitigated by choosing a Rabi frequency outside the servo-bump region. However, this constrains the usable range of gate speeds and can limit the achievable fidelity. To address this issue, we developed an active phase-noise stabilization system for a barium-ion optical-qubit laser at 1762 nm, employing a fiber electro-optic modulator (EOM) with an electrical feedforward servo. Our results demonstrate that this setup, based on the Pound-Drever-Hall (PDH) feedforward method, can suppress servo-bump phase noise by 15 dB near the bump peak frequency in our locking system. The laser phase noise is analyzed using delayed self-heterodyne interferometry (DSHI). We further tested the stabilized laser on an optical qubit and observed a clear improvement in coherence time based on the measured amplitude decay of Rabi oscillations, even when the Rabi frequency lies within the servo-bump bandwidth. This technique can be readily adapted to other optical qubits with minimal modifications.
Explore related subjects
Keep this discovery
Explore connections, maps & timelines
Jia-Yang Gao, Jianwei Lee, Morteza Ahmadi, Manas Mukherjee. 2026-07-27. Pound-Drever-Hall Feedforward for Trapped-Ion Optical Qubits. https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.24050
Cite the original work for its findings. Save a collection to share your selection of sources.