Quantum Simulations and Computations with Ion Trap Systems*

Ion trap quantum computer systems have essentially perfect idle coherence properties with fully-connected and reconfigurable gate operations. The frontiers of this platform have thus expanded from the physics of qubits and gates to the engineering of optical control signals, the efficient compilation of quantum gates, the mitigation of errors in software [1], and demonstrations of algorithms and quantum simulations that touch many areas of science. I will present recent results in all of these fronts with state-of-the-art ion trap quantum computer systems and simulators, from both the Duke Quantum Center and IonQ, Inc.  This includes the highest fidelities observed in a many-qubit system [2], a newly discovered scheme for single-step many-qubit gates [3], simulations of exotic phases of magnetism [4], and the outlook for further scaling of ion trap quantum computers based on a well-defined and modular architecture.

[1] A. Maksymkov, et al., arXiv 2301.07233 (2023)

[2] https://ionq.com/posts/may-17-2022-ionq-forte

[3] O. Katz, et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 129, 063603 (2022); arXiv:2207.10550 (2022); arXiv:2209.05691 (2022)

[4] L. Feng, et al., arXiv:2211.01275 (2022)