Influence of fast and slow laser phase noise on the fidelity of the Mølmer-Sørensen trapped-ion gate
Abstract
High-fidelity two-qubit entangling gates are essential for the realization of useful quantum algorithms on quantum processors. The Mølmer-Sørensen (MS) gate has become a common choice for trapped-ion quantum computing due to its resilience to ion temperature and its demonstrated record fidelities. However, the spectral impurity of the driving laser field impacts gate performance, with phase noise influencing the qubit dynamics through mechanisms operating on different timescales. In this work, we present a comprehensive theoretical analysis of laser phase noise in the MS gate, identifying two spectral ranges which influence the gate fidelity the most: "fast" noise at frequencies near the motional mode spectrum, and "slow" noise at frequencies on the order of the inverse gate time. We derive the noise Hamiltonians for two common laser beam geometries and obtain analytical expressions for the average gate error in terms of the laser noise power spectral density and gate parameters. For slowly varying noise spectra, we provide simplified error estimates. In addition, we validate our findings against previously published numerical simulations.
Versions
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BibTeX
@misc{semenin2026influence,
title = {{Influence of fast and slow laser phase noise on the fidelity of the Mølmer-Sørensen trapped-ion gate}},
author = {Nikita Semenin and Ksenia Khabarova and Nikolay Kolachevsky},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2609.26912},
eprint = {2609.26912},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.26912},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Influence of fast and slow laser phase noise on the fidelity of the Mølmer-Sørensen trapped-ion gate
AU - Nikita Semenin
AU - Ksenia Khabarova
AU - Nikolay Kolachevsky
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/22
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2609.26912
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.26912
AB - High-fidelity two-qubit entangling gates are essential for the realization of useful quantum algorithms on quantum processors. The Mølmer-Sørensen (MS) gate has become a common choice for trapped-ion quantum computing due to its resilience to ion temperature and its demonstrated record fidelities. However, the spectral impurity of the driving laser field impacts gate performance, with phase noise influencing the qubit dynamics through mechanisms operating on different timescales. In this work, we present a comprehensive theoretical analysis of laser phase noise in the MS gate, identifying two spectral ranges which influence the gate fidelity the most: "fast" noise at frequencies near the motional mode spectrum, and "slow" noise at frequencies on the order of the inverse gate time. We derive the noise Hamiltonians for two common laser beam geometries and obtain analytical expressions for the average gate error in terms of the laser noise power spectral density and gate parameters. For slowly varying noise spectra, we provide simplified error estimates. In addition, we validate our findings against previously published numerical simulations.
ER -