Scalable Trapped Ion Architectures and Micromotion Enhancement

Quantum computing promises exciting new opportunities to answer currently intractable problems. To achieve this feat, a quantum architecture that is able to perform high fidelity operations and can be readily scaled to large numbers of qubits is required. The main obstacle to quantum computation being used as another computational tool is the limited scalability of current architectures. Trapped ions are prensently one of the most promising platforms for large scale quantum computing, achieving high fidelity operations and long coherence times. Their current limitation lies in scalability. Most proposals to overcome this require coupling to many small trapped ion systems via an optical bus, or call for ions to be shuttled between segments of the system. Both of these proposals introduce new challenges and increase the complexity of the platform. Here, I demonstrate that a simple approach to scalability using microtrap arrays provides a feasible road to scalability. I show that this can be achieved without introducing any more complexity to the system than is required for trapping. Further, I show that this is realistically achievable with already demonstrated technology. Finally, I show that within this scheme, an old foe —micromotion —becomes an unlikely ally.