Applications of photonics in trapped ion quantum computing

The quest to engineer quantum computers of a useful scope faces many challenges that will require continued investigation of the physics underlying the devices. In this talk, I focus on trapped ion quantum computing. I discuss several recent advances my research group has contributed regarding optical control of Ba+ ions for quantum information processing, including multi-level qudit control and novel all-optical loading techniques, and provide a brief outlook on how photonic technologies can enable further progress in this field.