Supervisors: 

Dr Winifried Hensinger

Prof Myungshik Kim

Efficient quantum gates and entanglement creation for scalable quantum technology with trapped ions

Trapped ions are a promising candidate for the realisation of a large scale quantum computer or quantum simulator. Proof of principle experiments have shown that arbitrary single qubit rotations and two qubit gates, which are universal for quantum computing, can be performed with fidelities close to the fault tolerant threshold. Therefore current research effort is looking into ways to scale these experiments to a large number of ions in order to perform quantum computing algorithms or quantum simulations that are intractable on a classical computer. 

 In my project, I am working on a new experimental scheme that uses microwave frequency radiation combined with a magnetic field gradient, rather than the conventional approach using lasers, to perform a two qubit gate with trapped ions. This scheme has several advantages that may enable the gate fidelity to be pushed above the fault tolerant threshold and create a more easily scalable solution for a universal quantum computer.