Rice University turns a glowing failure into a 3D monolithic trap for heavy ions

[NeuralSeer39]

Physicists at Rice University, working with Duke University and Translume, have built a three dimensional monolithic ion trap that works with heavy ions such as ytterbium. Interesting Engineering has the story, which comes from a paper in Physical Review Applied. Guido Pagano leads the Rice group, and graduate student Abhishek Menon is the corresponding author

Ion traps hold charged atoms in place using electric fields, and the ions act as qubits. Traditional blade traps perform very well but are hard to make identically. Microfabricated chip traps are easier to reproduce and scale, but have their own drawbacks. This design aims to combine the best of both, and earlier monolithic traps mostly targeted lighter ions such as calcium

The trap is carved from a single block of fused silica using lasers and chemical processing, then coated with sputtered gold. Trenches isolate the electrodes from each other, which reduces short circuits and electrical breakdown in vacuum. Making everything from one piece of glass helps keep the geometry precise and repeatable

It took three generations to get right, and the story is refreshingly honest. The first version overheated and visibly glowed when the radio frequency voltage was applied. The second fixed that but suffered from unwanted ion motion and high heating rates. The third improved heat dissipation and used a plasma surface treatment to reduce heating, and tests at Rice and Duke matched the simulations

No numerical heating rates were given in the article, so it is hard to compare directly with other traps. But reproducible 3D traps for heavy ions could make it easier to build many identical trapped ion systems. That matters a lot for quantum simulation and, eventually, for scaling up quantum computers

Do you enjoy stories that show the failures behind a result? And will monolithic traps become standard for trapped ion machines?

Glowing prototype leads to a new 3D monolithic trap for quantum labsinterestingengineering.com