Optical Interconnects for Trapped-Ion Quantum Transmitters

Abstract

This thesis describes the use of diffractive mirrors for efficient collection of photons from an ion in a modern surface Paul trap. Ion light collection is one of the important steps of most of the quantum computing and communication protocols using trapped ions and has a direct effect on the performance of these protocols. This is the first demonstration of an integrated-optic for a surface ion trap and a step towards realizing scalable quantum computing and communication using trapped ions. These mirrors are monolithically integrated onto the ground electrode of the trap. The fabrication of the mirrors has been accomplished by patterning diffraction rings on the silicon dioxide substrate of the trap chip and then coating it with aluminium to form a diffractive mirror integrated onto the electrode. We verified that the altered trap is still functional and demonstrated that thesemirrors substantially increase the efficiency of free space ion light collection and ion light single mode bre coupling. The mirror design is aberration free and we demonstrated this by obtaining near Diffraction-limited images of an ion. To measure the collection efficiency of the diffractive mirrors, we performed a single photon generation protocol based on an optical pumping scheme and one chapter of this thesis describes the implementation of this scheme.