Planar ion chip design for scalable quantum information processing

We investigate a planar ion chip design with a two-dimensional array of linear ion traps for scalable quantum information processing. Qubits are formed from the internal electronic states of trapped ^40Ca^+ ions. The segmented electrodes reside in a single plane on a substrate and a grounded metal plate separately, a combination of appropriate rf and DC potentials is applied to them for stable ion confinement. Every two adjacent electrodes can generate a linear ion trap in and between the electrodes above the chip at a distance dependent on the geometrical scale and other considerations. The potential distributions are calculated by using a static electric field qualitatively. This architecture provides a conceptually simple avenue to achieving the microfabrication and large-scale quantum computation based on the arrays of trapped ions.