skip to main content

Explore Research Products in the NSF-PAR

This content will become publicly available on June 26, 2024

Title: Ablation loading of barium ions into a surface-electrode trap

Trapped-ion quantum information processing may benefit from qubits encoded in isotopes that are practically available in only small quantities, e.g., due to low natural abundance or radioactivity. Laser ablation provides a method of controllably liberating neutral atoms or ions from low-volume targets, but energetic ablation products can be difficult to confine in the small ion-electrode distance, micron-scale microfabricated traps amenable to high-speed, high-fidelity manipulation of ion arrays. Here, we investigate ablation-based ion loading into surface-electrode traps of different sizes to test a model describing ion loading probability as a function of effective trap volume and other trap parameters. We characterize loading of ablated barium from a metallic source in two cryogenic surface-electrode traps with 730 and 50 μm ion-electrode distances. Our loading rate agrees with a predictive analytical model, providing insight for the confinement of limited-quantity species of interest for quantum computing, simulation, and sensing.

  more » « less
Award ID(s):
1734011
NSF-PAR ID:
10479121
Author(s) / Creator(s):
; ; ; ; ;
Publisher / Repository:
Applied Physics Letters
Date Published:
Journal Name:
Applied Physics Letters
Volume:
122
Issue:
26
ISSN:
0003-6951
Format(s):
Medium: X
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
More Like this
  1. ; ( , International journal of mass spectrometry)
    null (Ed.)
    A large aspect ratio (AR) leads to higher ion capacity in miniaturized ion trap mass spectrometers. The AR of an ion trap represents the ratio between an extended trapping dimension and the characteristic trapping dimension. In contrast to linear and rectilinear traps, changing the AR of a toroidal ion trap(TorIT) results in changes to the degree of curvature and shape of the trapping potential, and hence, on performance as a mass analyzer. SIMION simulations show that higher-order terms in the trapping potential vary strongly for small and moderate AR values (below ~10), with the effects asymptotically flattening for larger AR values. Because of the asymmetry in electrode geometry, the trapping center does not coincide with the geometric center of the trap, and this displacement also varies with AR. For instance, in the asymmetric TorIT, the saddle point in the trapping potential and the geometric trap center differ from þ0.6 to 0.4 mm depending on AR. Ion secular frequencies also change with the AR. Whereas ions in the simplified TorIT have stable trajectories for any value of AR, ions in the asymmetric TorIT become unstable at large AR values. Variations in high-order terms, the trapping center, and secular frequencies with AR are a unique feature of toroidal traps, and require significant changes in trap design and operation as the AR is changed. 
    more » « less
  2. ; ; ; ( , Communications of the ACM)
    Trapped ions (TIs) are a leading candidate for building Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum (NISQ) hardware. TI qubits have fundamental advantages over other technologies, featuring high qubit quality, coherence time, and qubit connectivity. However, current TI systems are small in size and typically use a single trap architecture, which has fundamental scalability limitations. To progress toward the next major milestone of 50--100 qubit TI devices, a modular architecture termed the Quantum Charge Coupled Device (QCCD) has been proposed. In a QCCD-based TI device, small traps are connected through ion shuttling. While the basic hardware components for such devices have been demonstrated, building a 50--100 qubit system is challenging because of a wide range of design possibilities for trap sizing, communication topology, and gate implementations and the need to match diverse application resource requirements. Toward realizing QCCD-based TI systems with 50--100 qubits, we perform an extensive application-driven architectural study evaluating the key design choices of trap sizing, communication topology, and operation implementation methods. To enable our study, we built a design toolflow, which takes a QCCD architecture's parameters as input, along with a set of applications and realistic hardware performance models. Our toolflow maps the applications onto the target device and simulates their execution to compute metrics such as application run time, reliability, and device noise rates. Using six applications and several hardware design points, we show that trap sizing and communication topology choices can impact application reliability by up to three orders of magnitude. Microarchitectural gate implementation choices influence reliability by another order of magnitude. From these studies, we provide concrete recommendations to tune these choices to achieve highly reliable and performant application executions. With industry and academic efforts underway to build TI devices with 50-100 qubits, our insights have the potential to influence QC hardware in the near future and accelerate the progress toward practical QC systems. 
    more » « less
  3. ; ; ; ( , Annual Review of Nuclear and Particle Science)
    Penning-trap mass spectrometry in atomic and nuclear physics has become a well-established and reliable tool for the determination of atomic masses. In combination with short-lived radioactive nuclides it was first introduced at ISOLTRAP at the Isotope Mass Separator On-Line facility (ISOLDE) at CERN. Penning traps have found new applications in coupling to other production mechanisms, such as in-flight production and separation systems. The applications in atomic and nuclear physics range from nuclear structure studies and related precision tests of theoretical approaches to description of the strong interaction to tests of the electroweak Standard Model, quantum electrodynamics and neutrino physics, and applications in nuclear astrophysics. The success of Penning-trap mass spectrometry is due to its precision and accuracy, even for low ion intensities (i.e., low production yields), as well as its very fast measurement cycle, enabling access to short-lived isotopes. The current reach in relative mass precision goes beyond δ m/ m=10 −8 , the half-life limit is as low as a few milliseconds, and the sensitivity is on the order of one ion per minute in the trap. We provide a comprehensive overview of the techniques and applications of Penning-trap mass spectrometry in nuclear and atomic physics. 
    more » « less
  4. ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ( , Review of Scientific Instruments)

    We describe the design, construction, and operation of an apparatus that utilizes a piezoelectric transducer for in-vacuum loading of nanoparticles into an optical trap for use in levitated optomechanics experiments. In contrast to commonly used nebulizer-based trap-loading methods that generate aerosolized liquid droplets containing nanoparticles, the method produces dry aerosols of both spherical and high-aspect ratio particles ranging in size by approximately two orders of magnitude. The device has been shown to generate accelerations of order 107 g, which is sufficient to overcome stiction forces between glass nanoparticles and a glass substrate for particles as small as 170 nm in diameter. Particles with sizes ranging from 170 nm to ∼10μm have been successfully loaded into optical traps at pressures ranging from 1 bar to 0.6 mbar. We report the velocity distribution of the particles launched from the substrate, and our results indicate promise for direct loading into ultra-high-vacuum with sufficient laser feedback cooling. This loading technique could be useful for the development of compact fieldable sensors based on optically levitated nanoparticles as well as matter–wave interference experiments with ultra-cold nano-objects, which rely on multiple repeated free-fall measurements and thus require rapid trap re-loading in high vacuum conditions.

     
    more » « less
  5. ; ; ; ; ; ( , Scientific Reports)
    Abstract

    Non-contact micro-manipulation tools have enabled invasion-free studies of fragile synthetic particles and biological cells. Rapid electrokinetic patterning (REP) traps target particles/cells, suspended in an electrolyte, on an electrode surface. This entrapment is electrokinetic in nature and thus depends strongly on the suspension medium’s properties. REP has been well characterized for manipulating synthetic particles suspended in low concentration salt solutions (~ 2 mS/m). However, it is not studied as extensively for manipulating biological cells, which introduces an additional level of complexity due to their limited viability in hypotonic media. In this work, we discuss challenges posed by isotonic electrolytes and suggest solutions to enable REP manipulation in bio-relevant media. Various formulations of isotonic media (salt and sugar-based) are tested for their compatibility with REP. REP manipulation is observed in low concentration salt-based media such as 0.1× phosphate buffered saline (PBS) when the device electrodes are passivated with a dielectric layer. We also show manipulation of murine pancreatic cancer cells suspended in a sugar-based (8.5% w/v sucrose and 0.3% w/v dextrose) isotonic medium. The ability to trap mammalian cells and deposit them in custom patterns enables high-impact applications such as determining their biomechanical properties and 3D bioprinting for tissue scaffolding.

     
    more » « less
  • Citation Formats
  • MLA
  • APA
  • Chicago
  • BibTeX
  • Save / Share this Record
  • Send to Email