Design and Characterization of Compact Acousto-Optic-Deflector Individual Addressing System for Trapped-Ion Quantum Computing

We present a compact design for a beam-steering system based on acousto-optic-deflectors (AODs) used as an individual addressing system for trapped-ion quantum computing. The design targets to minimize the optomechanical degrees of freedom and the optical beam paths to improve optical stability, and we successfully implemented a solution with a compact footprint of less than 1 square foot. The system characterization results show that we achieve clean Gaussian beams at 355nm wavelength with a beam steering range of sim50 times the beam diameter, and an intensity crosstalk of < 9 times 10^-4 at all neighboring ions in a five-ion chain. Based on these capabilities, we experimentally demonstrate individual addressing of a 30-ion chain. We estimate the beam switching time of the AOD to be sim240 ns. The compact system design is expected to provide high optical stability, providing the potential for high-fidelity trapped-ion quantum computing with long ion chains.