Robust quantum gate optimization with first-order derivatives of ion–phonon and ion–ion couplings in trapped ions

Trapped ion hardware has made significant progress recently and is now one of the leading platforms for quantum computing. To construct two-qubit gates in trapped ions, experimental manipulation approaches for ion chains are becoming increasingly prevalent. Given the restricted control technology, how implementing high-fidelity quantum gate operations is crucial. Many works in current pulse design optimization focus on ion–phonon and effective ion–ion couplings while ignoring the first-order derivative terms expansion impacts of these two terms brought on by experiment defects. This paper proposes a novel robust quantum control optimization method in trapped ions. By introducing the first-order derivative terms caused by the error into the optimization cost function, we generate an extremely robust Mølmer–Sørensen gate with infidelity below 10⁻³ under a drift noise range of ±10 kHz, the relative robustness achieves a tolerance of ±5%, compared to the 200-kHz frequency spacing between phonon modes, and for time noise drift, the tolerance reached to 2%. Our work reveals the vital role of the first-order derivative terms of coupling in trapped ion pulse control optimization, especially the first-order derivative terms of ion–ion coupling. It provides a robust optimization scheme for realizing more efficient entangled states in trapped ion platforms.