High-power ultrafast laser source with 300 MHz repetition rate for trapped-ion quantum logic

Trapped ions are a major candidate technology for scalable quantum computation. However, current methods for performing quantum logic gates with trapped ions are limited to gate times of about 10 µs. This drawback is overcome in a recently proposed scheme that uses pairs of counter-propagating π-pulses, resonant with an allowed ion transition, where the time needed for a gate operation is inversely proportional to the laser repetition rate [1]. Our MOPA architecture allows scaling to high repetition rate at constant pulse energy.