Regular Article

Quantum computer with cold ions in the Aubry pinned phase

Laboratoire de Physique Théorique, IRSAMC, Université de Toulouse, CNRS, UPS, 31062 Toulouse, France

^* e-mail: dima@irsamc.ups-tlse.fr

Received: 26 February 2019
Accepted: 23 April 2019
Published online: 23 July 2019

Abstract

It is proposed to modify the Cirac-Zoller proposal of quantum computer with cold ions in a global oscillator trap potential by adding a periodic potential with an incommensurate average ratio of number of ions to number of periods being order of unity. With the increase of the periodic potential amplitude the system enters in the Aubry pinned phase characterized by quasi-frozen positions of ions and a gap of their first phonon excitations becomes independent of number of ions. This gives hopes that this quantum computer will be really scalable. It is argued that the usual single- and two-qubit gates can be realized between the nearby ions in the Aubry phase. The possibilities of experimental realizations of a periodic potential with microtrap arrays or optical lattices are discussed. It is pointed that the disorder of distances between microtraps with one ion per trap can lead to the Anderson localization of phonon modes with interesting possibilities for ion quantum computing.