Kathy-Anne Brickman Soderberg
The Univeristy of Chicago
Quantum Computing with Atoms and Ions
Both trapped ions and neutral atoms are strong candidate systems for realizing a scalable quantum computer. This is due to the high degree of control over both the external trapping fields and the internal degrees of freedom. Both systems offer the ability to have very strong coupling between qubits and weak coupling to the environment, but can also be strongly coupled to the environment through microwave or laser radiation fields for measurement. Trapped ions have shown an unparalleled level of success towards scalable information processing. All of the basic operations have been implemented with high fidelity and current work is focused on scaling up to higher numbers of qubits. Recently, neutral atoms have made great strides toward scalable quantum information processing as well. Neutral atoms in an optical lattice have the advantage of a built in scalability, in that thousands of qubits can be held in regular micron-sized volume arrays. In this talk, I will present work done in both systems. I will show how all of the basic building blocks have been implemented with trapped ions and present a small quantum algorithm performed on two qubits. In addition, I will present progress on a new neutral atom experiment that uses two atomic species in two independent optical lattices for the purpose of quantum computing. One atomic species acts as a qubit and the second as a messenger atom to mediate and carry entanglement among the qubits. Operations are performed between the two atomic species by translating the lattices with respect to each other to bring two target atoms into spatial contact.
Wednesday, November 18, 2009 at 12:00 PM
Room F235, Technological Institute
Refreshments are served at 11:30 PM
