ETH Zurich researchers demonstrated a microfabricated ion trap that uses static electric and magnetic fields instead of the oscillating fields used in conventional trapped-ion quantum computers. Jonathan Home's team combined an electrode chip with a three-tesla superconducting magnet and demonstrated coherent control of a trapped ion's internal and motional quantum states.
The experiment also moved a single ion freely across a two-dimensional plane by adjusting the electrode voltages. This offers a different approach to connecting trapping sites without the fixed transport channels of conventional designs. The demonstrated device was a single-ion research platform: operations between ions in neighbouring traps remained a next step. The results were reported in Nature, with potential applications in quantum computing and scanning probes of surface fields.
