Eur. Phys. J. D 63, 157-164 (2011)
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjd/e2011-20108-2

Regular Article

Quantum gates using electronic and nuclear spins of Yb⁺ in a magnetic field gradient

¹ State Key Laboratory of Magnetic Resonance and Atomic and Molecular Physics, Wuhan Institute of Physics and Mathematics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Wuhan National Laboratory for Optoelectronics, Wuhan 430071, P.R. China
² Graduate School of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, P.R. China
³ Fachbereich Physik, Universität Siegen, 57068 Siegen, Germany
⁴ Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies, Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg, Albertstraße 19, 79104 Freiburg, Germany

^a e-mail: LynneWWang@gmail.com

Received: 17 February 2011
Received in final form: 25 March 2011
Published online: 17 May 2011

Abstract

An efficient scheme is proposed to carry out gate operations on an array of trapped Yb⁺ ions, based on a previous proposal using both electronic and nuclear degrees of freedom in a magnetic field gradient. For this purpose we consider the Paschen-Back regime (strong magnetic field) and employ a high-field approximation in this treatment. We show the possibility to suppress the unwanted coupling between the electron spins by appropriately swapping states between electronic and nuclear spins. The feasibility of generating the required high magnetic field is discussed.