A High Motional Frequency Ion Trapping Regime for Quantum Information Science

Quantum Physics [Submitted on 3 Apr 2026] A High Motional Frequency Ion Trapping Regime for Quantum Information Science A. J. Rasmusson We investigate high frequency motional states of trapped atomic ions. Trapped ions in rf traps are confined by an approximate harmonic potential and exhibit quantum motional states that mediate essential techniques in quantum computing, simulation, networking, and precision measurement. However, motional state decoherence mechanisms, heating and dephasing, are broadly limiting: reduced two-qubit gate fidelities; lower fidelity and lifetime of highly nonclassical bosonic states; long laser cooling times; and large recoil heating rates. These also challenge the scalability of increasingly sophisticated protocols. We propose high motional frequency ion trapping as an operating regime that addresses these challenges and reshapes the design landscape for quantum information experiments and quantum control techniques. We report an experimentally motivated investigation of realizing this high-frequency regime and discuss the consequences for laser cooling, motional state coherence, fidelity and lifetime of nonclassical bosonic states, and scalability of experimental runtimes. We report clear design trajectories for ion traps to reach high motional frequency, a new limiting mechanism for laser cooling at these high frequencies, and more than an order-of-magnitude speedup in experimental duty cycles with larger speed ups possible for quantum error correction protocols. Taken together, high motional frequency ion trapping has broad implications for the future of quantum information experiments. Subjects: Quantum Physics (quant-ph); Atomic Physics (physics.atom-ph) Cite as: arXiv:2604.03435 [quant-ph]   (or arXiv:2604.03435v1 [quant-ph] for this version)   https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2604.03435 Focus to learn more Submission history From: Alexander Rasmusson [view email] [v1] Fri, 3 Apr 2026 20:19:30 UTC (1,056 KB) Access Paper: HTML (experimental) view license Current browse context: quant-ph < prev   |   next > new | recent | 2026-04 Change to browse by: physics physics.atom-ph References & Citations INSPIRE HEP NASA ADS Google Scholar Semantic Scholar Export BibTeX Citation Bookmark Bibliographic Tools Bibliographic and Citation Tools Bibliographic Explorer Toggle Bibliographic Explorer (What is the Explorer?) Connected Papers Toggle Connected Papers (What is Connected Papers?) Litmaps Toggle Litmaps (What is Litmaps?) scite.ai Toggle scite Smart Citations (What are Smart Citations?) Code, Data, Media Demos Related Papers About arXivLabs Which authors of this paper are endorsers? | Disable MathJax (What is MathJax?)