Microfabricated Surface-Electrode Ion Trap for Scalable Quantum Information Processing

Individual laser-cooled ²⁴Mg⁺ ions are confined in a linear Paul trap with a novel geometry where gold electrodes are located in a single plane and the ions are trapped 40  μm above this plane. The relatively simple trap design and fabrication procedure are important for large-scale quantum information processing (QIP) using ions. Measured ion motional frequencies are compared to simulations. Measurements of ion recooling after cooling is temporarily suspended yield a heating rate of approximately 5 motional quanta per millisecond for a trap frequency of 2.83 MHz, sufficiently low to be useful for QIP.