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EIT based addressing of individual ions in a microtrap (EIT addressing)
Start date: Aug 1, 2009, End date: Oct 31, 2011 PROJECT  FINISHED 

Recent amazing experiments with trapped ions have demonstrated the feasibility of ion based quantum computing. At the same time, these prove of principle experiments have allowed us to analyze the experimental limitations on the fidelity of each quantum operation, on its speed, as well as on the storage time of the quantum memory. Moreover, since a practical quantum computer should operate with much more qubits and more complicated algorithms, requiring more operations, these experiments have allowed to outline strategies to overcome these limits. For example, ion heating limits the decoherence time of the ion-qubits. One of the ways to ameliorate this problem is to operate the trap in the cryogenic enviroment, which requires a minituarization of the trap and its operation with a very limited optical access. Another example is the improvement of the speed of the quantum gate by increasing the ion confinement. At the same time, the smaller the separation between the ions, the worse is the addressing of individual ions using current experimental methods due to the diffraction limit of the addressing beams. In this project we plan to address these two experimental challenges. First, we plan to demonstrate the operation of a fibered micro ion trap on a chip, which is an important step towards the realization of a cryogenically cooled trap. Second, we want to experimentally demonstrate a method for addressing individual ions based on Electro-magnetically Induced Transparency. This addresing method is not restricted by the diffraction limit and therefore promises much better addressing fidelities compared to the currently existing methods. The positive realization of this project will be of a great importance not only for the ion community, but will also have an impact on the ongoing experiments with neutral atoms in optical lattices and for the solid state physics qubits, where the sub-diffraction limited addressability of individual qubits is highly desirable.
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