Fast entangling gates in long ion chains

Abstract: We present a model for implementing fast entangling gates (${\sim}1~\mu$s) with ultra-fast pulses in arbitrarily long ion chains, that requires low numbers of pulses and can be implemented with laser repetition rates well within experimental capability. We demonstrate that we are able to optimise pulse sequences that have theoretical fidelities above $99.99\%$ in arbitrarily long ion-chains, for laser repetition rates on the order of $100-300$~MHz. Notably, we find higher repetition rates are not required for gates in longer ion chains, which is in contrast to scaling analyses with other gate schemes. When pulse imperfections are considered in our calculations, we find that achievable gate fidelity is independent of the number of ions in the chain. We also show that pulse control requirements do not scale up with the number of ions. We find that population transfer efficiencies of above $99.9\%$ from individual ultra-fast pulses is the threshold for realising high-fidelity gates, which may be achievable in near-future experiments.