Towards scaling up trapped ion quantum information processing

Recent theoretical advances have identified several computational algorithms that can be implemented utilizing quantum information processing (QIP), which gives an exponential speedup over the corresponding (known) algorithms on conventional computers. QIP makes use of the counter-intuitive properties of quantum mechanics, such as entanglement and the superposition principle. Unfortunately it has so far been impossible to build a practical QIP system that outperforms conventional computers. Atomic ions confined in an array of interconnected traps represent a potentially scalable approach to QIP. All basic requirements have been experimentally demonstrated in one and two qubit experiments. The remaining task is to scale the system to many qubits while minimizing and correcting errors in the system. While this requires extremely challenging technological improvements, no fundamental roadblocks are currently foreseen.