Trapped ions for multi-valued quantum information

Abstract

I give an overview of trapped ion quantum information experiments and discuss prospects for implementing multi-valued quantum logic using trapped ions. Qudits (the multi-state generalization of qubits) are attractive for quantum computing because they enable a much larger Hilbert space for the same number of trapped ions, which may allow us to improve the information capacity of a quantum processor. I describe possible advantages and disadvantages of using qudits in place of qubits, and lay out some of the protocols that my lab will test for implementing measurements, single-qudit operations, and two-qudit operations in a trapped ion system.