Quantum Computation with “Hot” Trapped Ions

The authors describe two methods that have been proposed to circumvent the problem of heating by external electromagnetic fields in ion trap quantum computers. Firstly the higher order modes of ion oscillation (i.e., modes other than the center-of-mass mode) have much slower heating rates, and can therefore be employed as a reliable quantum information bus. Secondly they discuss a recently proposed method combining adiabatic passage and a number-state dependent phase shift which allows quantum gates to be performed using the center-of-mass mode as the information bus, regardless of its initial state.