Vertical Shuttling Protocols for Trapped Ions in Multi-Rail, Multi-Zone Surface Ion Trap Architectures

Quantum Physics [Submitted on 23 Apr 2026] Vertical Shuttling Protocols for Trapped Ions in Multi-Rail, Multi-Zone Surface Ion Trap Architectures Qirat Iqbal, Altaf H. Nizamani We investigate optimized vertical ion-shuttling protocols for trapped-ion applications across a range of ion-trap experiments, including three-dimensional gradient-measurement sensors, on-chip ion fluorescence collection and imaging, improved laser accessibility, and quantum information processing. In this work, we focus on minimizing motional energy gain during ion transport. Our findings indicate that anomalous heating becomes the dominant limiting factor only for shuttling durations exceeding 500~\mu\mathrm{s}, whereas the final motional excitation is strongly dependent on the selected transport protocol. Using a recently measured heating rate of (3.1 \pm 0.35) quanta/ms at an ion--surface separation of 134 \pm 1.5~\mu\mathrm{m}, we demonstrate that the motional excitation can be restricted to fewer than eight quanta when the ion is vertically displaced by 86~\mu\mathrm{m} from its initial position. These results enable adiabatic shuttling within 0.5~\mathrm{ms}, thereby meeting the operational requirements for high-fidelity quantum sensing and coherent control. Subjects: Quantum Physics (quant-ph) Cite as: arXiv:2604.21350 [quant-ph]   (or arXiv:2604.21350v1 [quant-ph] for this version)   https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2604.21350 Focus to learn more Submission history From: Altaf Nizamani [view email] [v1] Thu, 23 Apr 2026 07:09:27 UTC (1,006 KB) Access Paper: view license Current browse context: quant-ph < prev   |   next > new | recent | 2026-04 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?)