Efficient sideband cooling protocol for long trapped-ion chains

Abstract: Trapped ions are a promising candidate for large scale quantum computation. Several systems have been built in both academic and industrial settings to implement modestly-sized quantum algorithms. Efficient cooling of the motional degrees of freedom is a key requirement for high-fidelity quantum operations using trapped ions. Here, we present a technique whereby individual ions are used to cool individual motional modes in parallel, reducing the time required to bring an ion chain to its motional ground state. We demonstrate this technique experimentally and develop a model to understand the efficiency of our parallel sideband cooling technique compared to more traditional methods. This technique is applicable to any system using resolved sideband cooling of co-trapped atomic species and only requires individual addressing of the trapped particles.