News | Niffenegger Lab

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2024

Robert Niffenegger Obtains Prestigious NSF CAREER Award to Revolutionize Research with “Trapped Ions”

Robert Niffenegger – an assistant professor in the UMass Amherst Electrical and Computer Engineering Department – has received a coveted National Science Foundation CAREER Award of $624,196 for five years to do revolutionary research developing integrated technologies for trapped ion qubits. As the principal investigator on the NSF project, Niffenegger says that the new integrated platform for trapped ion qubits will yield transformative impacts on quantum computing, sensing, timekeeping, and measurements of fundamental physics.

Our work is featured by the UMass College of Engineering in their latest issue of “Engineer Research Magazine”

Full story here: https://www.umass.edu/engineering/ENGINEER/CreatingNewParadigms

February 2024

Almost exactly 1 year after trapping our first ions, we posted our 1st paper to the arXiv!

Trapped ion qubit and clock operations with a visible wavelength photonic coil resonator stabilized integrated Brillouin laser (https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.16742)

January 2024

Chris Caron was featured by the University for his research in our lab!
https://www.umass.edu/gateway/research/stories/trapped-ion-quantum-computing

2023

1^st IONS⁺ TRAPPED! – 2/21/23

Ion⁺ trapped on chips we fabricated 22 days earlier.

A single Sr⁺ ion trapped 50 microns above a surface electrode chip trap microfabricated and packaged in the UMass Amherst cleanrooms
2/21/23

Chain of ⁸⁸Sr⁺ ions with one Sr⁺ ion of a different isotope. ⁸⁸Sr⁺ ions are laser cooled and scattering light from the 422nm laser, making them visible on the camera. However, the dark Sr⁺ ion is detuned from that transition. Still it is ionized and trapped, and doesn’t escape the trap as it heats up because is it sympathetically cooled by the ⁸⁸Sr⁺ ions in the trap with it. It ends up looking like a ‘hole’ in the crystal.
2/27/23

Loading large ion crystals in a few minutes suggests our chip is very high performance and confirms our loading rate is robust.
2/27/23

Freshly etched wafer of ion traps with our newest mask
1/29/23

Fall 2022

Optical Table Delivery

Aligning 461nm laser beam to our ion trap chip

461nm light illuminating the chamber to test Sr atomic source

Two new optical tables installed and ready for cryogenic ion trap system installation.

Do not try this at home. These are trained professionals from APM.

Room temperature Ion trap chamber assembled

Ion trap fabricated at UMass Amherst with custom interposer

Setting up our room temperature ion trap system

Summer 2022
Renovations nearing completion in the optics lab for shelving and vibrational support for cryogenic ion trap systems.

Fabrication progress: Full flow demonstrated.

Ion trap chips fabricated and diced entirely at UMass Amherst

April 2022
Progress on developing our trapped ion fabrication process.

March 2022
Optical systems setup in progress.

November 2021
1st Optical Table Delivered
(renovations ongoing in other half of lab)

9/01/2021
Laboratory in the new Physical Sciences Building undergoing renovations.
https://www.umass.edu/cp/physical-sciences-building

News about integrated photonics work at MIT LL

Lighting up the ion trap

The team is now looking forward to what they can do with this fully light-integrated chip. For one, “make more,” says Niffenegger. “Tiling these chips into an array could bring together many more ions, each able to be controlled precisely, opening the door to more powerful quantum computers.”

MIT Lincoln Laboratory Creates The First Trapped-Ion Quantum Chip With Fully Integrated Photonics

“I think many people in the quantum computing field think that the board is set and all of the leading technologies at play are well defined. I think our demonstration, together with other work integrating control of trapped ion qubits, could tip the game on its head and surprise some people that maybe the rules aren’t what they thought.” – Robert Niffenegger