A Blade-style Trap with Segmented Radiofrequency Electrodes for Long Ion Chains*

The blade trap has become a popular choice in the ion trapping community because of its capability of holding long chains of ions in deep trapping potentials. Its design provides greater control of the potential than the traditional Paul trap. Conventional blade traps deliver global radiofrequency (RF) via two blades and have two segmented direct current (DC) blades. Our symmetric design delivers both RF and DC to each of the 5 electrodes spanning all 4 segmented blades. Consequently, this provides more DC control and stronger radial confinement. The electronics mixing our balanced resonator output with DC sources are external to the vacuum chamber, enabling rapid prototyping of electronics. However, distributing RF to 20 electrodes invokes a challenge in phase matching the RF between electrodes. We present our studies on the tolerable level of RF phase mismatch between electrodes for quantum simulation with chains of up to 30 ions. Phase mismatch of the RF induces excess micromotion, and we estimate the achievable compensation with our 20 DC controls. Additionally, we propose an electronics control scheme to implement variable RF phase shifters to compensate RF phase mismatch errors. Implementing RF and DC on every electrode marks a step towards large-scale simulation with better control over the confining potential.