There’s plenty of action in the laboratory, even on the smallest scale: the QSea II project has demonstrated, for the first time, the controlled movement of a charged particle. As can be seen in the video, the QSea team were able to trap and move an ion. Using electromagnetic fields, the ion can be shuttled left and right on the ion trap chip and across two chips. This joint project by eleQtron, ParityQC and NXP Semiconductors thus marks another milestone on the path to making quantum technologies socially and commercially viable.
Shuttling an ion from one processor to another. This will enable two ion traps to be coupled in future, thereby interleaving two separate ion trap registers to form a larger register – a step towards scaling ion trap technology to create quantum processors with larger numbers of qubits.
Video: QSea Consortium
QSea II is building a modular and scalable quantum computer based on the MAGIC platform for trapped-ion qubits with gate-based control. The system is based on stored ion qubits that are coupled to one another via magnetic field gradients. This allows individual qubits to be controlled via high-frequency pulses. eleQtron is building the hardware for the quantum processor, whilst ParityQC is developing an operating system and algorithms for the hardware. NXP Semiconductors is supplying the control and regulation electronics as well as the sensor solution.
