Andris Huang L&S Math & Physical Sciences
Simulating the Dynamics of Electron Coulomb Crystals
This project will investigate the controllability and scalability of electron Coulomb crystals in Paul traps through a numerical simulation. Over the past few decades, quantum computing has been an emerging interest for researchers. Theories have suggested that quantum computers can utilize superposition and entanglement effects to process information much more efficiently than classical computers. However, despite the development in architectures including superconducting circuits, neutral atoms, and trapped ions, the scalability and fidelity of qubits remain a big challenge. A recently proposed candidate for qubits is the trapped electrons, which potentially maintain advantages of trapped ions and overcome some of ions’ weaknesses. As the feasibility of this architecture has been successfully demonstrated, the next milestone towards a large-scale fault-tolerant quantum computer is to demonstrate the formation of electron Coulomb crystals. But, the specifics of the crystal formation conditions are still unclear. Thus, this work aims to provide foundations for experiments by identifying the necessary and practical conditions for crystallizing electrons.