David P. Pappas, NIST
Progress in the field of experimental quantum information processing has been steady over the past decade with important developments continuing to be made in the understanding, design, and measurement of systems at the quantum level. As the boundaries of these measurements are pushed, we are finding that surface and interfacial properties play an increasingly important role. In general, this field has benefitted immensely from advances in VLSI. These advances allow for very good spatial definition of devices down to very small feature sizes, and high control of the bulk properties of materials such as metal contacts and insulators. However, in quantum systems, it has been found that control of surface and interface effects is critical to obtaining long coherence times and high fidelity qubit manipulation. I will present our recent measurements from trapped-ion and superconducting qubits, illustrating the importance of understanding and tailoring the surfaces and interfaces of micro-fabricated traps and superconducting circuits for future generations of quantum processors.