A microfabricated Ion Trap with an Integrated, Monolithic Optical Cavity

The project will involve several steps which are briefly outlined below:
Firstly, there will be considerable theoretical effort in establishing the protocol that will be used for the ion-photon and ion-ion entanglement. The physics itself is well-understood, but the application of this physics to our system requires careful planning so that the best protocol (decisions like which electronic transitions to use) for our needs can be chosen and so that the cavity parameters can be optimised for fast and high-fidelity entanglement.

Alongside this will run prototyping experiments on ion trap designs and cavity mirrors. The trap experiments will produce simple ion traps in a form similar to the final trap to test out how realistic the fabrication of such structures is and what properties we could expect from the final trap. The mirror tests will look at properties of the mirrors such as scattering loss and birefringence. The mirrors we plan to use are not routinely fabricated in the size we require, so their performance in the aforementioned respects is not reliably known. The results of these tests will indicate which of/whether any of the protocols considered are viable and if the performance one could expect from the final system is worthwhile pursuing

In addition to this will be simulation work to predict the properties of the final design. Specifically of concern are the electrical properties (how strongly the cavity will affect the trapping potential) and the mechanical properties (whethe