In-vacuum active electronics for microfabricated ion traps

The advent of microfabricated ion traps for the quantum information community has allowed research groups to build traps that incorporate an unprecedented number of trapping zones. However, as device complexity has grown, the number of digital-to-analog converter (DAC) channels needed to control these devices has grown as well, with some of the largest trap assemblies now requiring nearly one hundred DAC channels. Providing electrical connections for these channels into a vacuum chamber can be bulky and difficult to scale beyond the current numbers of trap electrodes. This paper reports on the development and testing of an in-vacuum DAC system that uses only 9 vacuum feedthrough connections to control a 78-electrode microfabricated ion trap. The system is characterized by trapping single and multiple Ca-40(+) ions. The measured axial mode stability, ion heating rates, and transport fidelities for a trapped ion are comparable to systems with external (air-side) commercial DACs. (C) 2014 AIP Publishing LLC.