IonQ achieves quantum entanglement rate above 1,000 per second

College Park, Maryland - Quantum computing company IonQ has reached a significant milestone in quantum interconnect technology, surpassing 1,000 entanglement events per second between a trapped ion qubit and solid-state memory. This rate, announced Thursday, marks over four times the previous record held by IonQ co-founder Chris Monroe's research group at Duke University.

The achievement was made possible through a photonic interconnect between a trapped ion system and a silicon vacancy qubit, expanding on IonQ's silicon vacancy quantum memory platform. Entanglement, the phenomenon that enabled this breakthrough, is crucial for networking quantum computers, allowing separate quantum systems to collaborate.

Niccolo de Masi, IonQ's Chairman and CEO, emphasized the milestone's importance as part of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's HARQ program, which aims to develop high-speed quantum interconnects compatible with various qubit technologies. IonQ has already commercialized its memory and interconnect platform, selling it to the University of Maryland in April and to SDT in South Korea in September.

The demonstrated architecture is expected to be compatible with multiple qubit approaches, such as neutral atoms and superconducting systems with transducers. Technical details of the achievement are available in an arXiv preprint. Headquarters for IonQ are located in College Park, Maryland.