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SQUEEZED VIBRATIONS

More speed out of the quantum gate

Nature Physics volume 17, pages 876–877 (2021)Cite this article

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Quantum gates on trapped ions may be quicker and more reliable owing to squeezing of their vibrational motion. A threefold drop in operation time shows potential for applications in quantum technologies.

Ion-trap quantum computers use the vibrational mode of atomic ions to mediate interactions between qubits stored in their internal electronic states1. This coupling is key to achieving fast and reliable quantum gate performance, but implementing the protocol with strong enough interactions is an ongoing challenge. Now, writing in Nature Physics, Shaun C. Burd and colleagues report that they have achieved a more than threefold reduction in the gate time needed to produce a maximally entangled Bell state in a trapped-ion system2. To do so, they applied a periodic modulation of the trapping forces, which led to squeezing — and antisqueezing — of the external position and momentum degrees of freedom, in turn modifying their coupling to the internal qubit states.

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Fig. 1: The collective vibration of two trapped ions follows a trajectory in oscillator phase space that is dependent on the internal qubit states.

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  1. Department of Physics and Astronomy, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark

    Klaus Mølmer

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  1. Klaus Mølmer
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Correspondence to Klaus Mølmer.

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The author declares no competing interests.

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Mølmer, K. More speed out of the quantum gate. Nat. Phys. 17, 876–877 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-021-01195-2

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