Speaker
Description
Optical tweezers offer new opportunities to control and manipulate trapped ions with applications in quantum information processing, metrology and precision spectroscopy. The tweezers may be used to modify the local confinement of the ions, thereby modifying the soundwave spectrum of the entire crystal. In this way, the soundwave mediated spin-spin interactions between the ions may be programmed with applications in quantum computing and simulation 1. I will highlight our experimental progress towards implementing this system in the lab with emphasis on optimizing tweezer delivery and eliminating aberrations by using single ions as probes 2. In the tightly focused tweezers, the paraxial approximation breaks down, leading to unexpected state-dependent forces on the ions in the direction perpendicular to the tweezers. I will explain how these may cause small, but avoidable errors in existing trapped ion quantum computing platforms and, conversely, how these may be used to our advantage for implementing novel quantum gates [3,4]. Finally, I will discuss our ideas of using the optical tweezers in precision spectroscopy.
1 J. D. Arias Espinoza et al., Phys. Rev. A 104, 013302 (2021).
2 M. Mazzanti et al., Phys. Rev. A 110, 043105 (2024).
3 M. Mazzanti et al., Phys. Rev. Research 5, 033036 (2023).
4 L.P.H. Gallagher et al., arXiv:2502.19345 (2025).
