Laser-cooled trapped ions are among the most pristine and controllable quantum systems. Research performed in Prof. Islam’s group is currently focused on the following:
- Quantum simulation: The QITI laboratory is building a programmable trapped-ion quantum simulator with 171Yb+ qubits, with optical controls at the level of individual ions for studying problems in quantum many-body physics and computation.
- QuantumION: In collaboration with Prof. Crystal Senko’s group and supported by Transformative Quantum Technologies (TQT) , we are building an open-access, remotely operable trapped-ion quantum computer (QuantumION). The hardware is based on up to sixteen 133Ba+ ion-qubits.
- Quantum simulation algorithms: We research on classical and quantum algorithms to make quantum simulation more efficient, e.g. by using modern machine learning methods. We collaborate with the Perimeter Institute Quantum Intelligence Laboratory
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We acknowledge financial support from University of Waterloo, NSERC, Government of Ontario, US ARO, and Transformative Quantum Technologies (TQT, CFREF).
Recent News
12 Nov, 2020 - Nik awarded with best presentation award!
University of Waterloo and University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, UK hosted their first virtual research colloquium on 12 Nov, 2020. Nikolay presented a talk on behalf of the QuantumION project, focusing on our design for individual addressing of Barium qubits.
His talk was judged to be the best UW presentation of the day! Congrats, Nik!
20 Oct, 2020 - Rajibul honoured with President’s Excellence in Research award!
Rajibul received a President’s Excellence in Research award from the President and Vice-Chancellor of University of Waterloo in recognition of an Early Researcher Award from the Government of Ontario.
14 Aug, 2020 - Manas defends his MSc thesis!
Dr. Manas Sajjan defends his MSc thesis online! His MSc work included both theoretical and experimental aspects. On the theoretical side, Manas investigated the role of optical tweezer potentials on ions confined in a radio-frequency (RF) trap. Optical tweezers would allow for local control of the confining potential, which can be used for investigating quantum thermodynamics. On the experimental side, Manas was part of the team that built our four-rod trap. He fabricated the electrodes, built the RF resonator which powers them, and worked on optics.
Congrats, Manas!
Recent Publications
Experimental and theoretical investigations of radio-frequency and optical trapping potentials for atomic ions
Over the years, trapped ion have emerged as one of the premier candidates for universal quantum simulation due to its long coherence time, low initialization and detection errors, robust high-fidelity gate sets and fully connected yet tunable spin-graph. In this thesis we exclusively focus on the generation of the trapping potential in a four-rod trap, one of the most commonly studied ion-trapping architecture.
Machine learning design of a trapped-ion quantum spin simulator
Trapped ion quantum simulators can in principle simulate an arbitrarily connected spin model. This requires precise programming of the ions with laser beams. In this paper, we numerically show that modern machine learning methods can be employed to program a trapped ion quantum simulator to simulate spin Hamiltonians on an arbitrary lattice geometry.
Holographic Optical Manipulation of Trapped Ions for Quantum Simulation
Trapped ion is one of the leading platforms for quantum simulation experiment due to its long coherence time and high fidelity state initialization, detection, and manipulation. To individually address ions at a single-ion level, it requires sophisticated optical engineering. In the thesis, we present a novel single qubit addressing system that is immune to imperfections of optical imaging and can scale to different size of the system.
