Realizing quantum gates with optically-addressable ¹⁷¹Yb⁺ ion qudits

The use of multilevel information carriers, also known as qudits, is a promising path for exploring scalability of quantum computing devices. Here we present a proof-of-principle realization of a quantum processor register that uses optically-addressed ¹⁷¹Yb⁺ ion qudits in a linear trap. The rich level structure of ¹⁷¹Yb⁺ ions allows using the Zeeman sublevels of the quadrupole clock transition at 435.5 nm for efficient and robust qudit encoding. We demonstrate the realization of the universal set of gates consisting of single-qudit rotations and a two-qudit Molmer-Sorensen operation with a two-ququart system, which is formally equivalent to a universal gate-based four-qubit processor. Our results paves a way towards further studies of more efficient implementations of quantum algorithms with trapped-ion-based processors and, specifically, exploring properties of ¹⁷¹Yb⁺ ion qudits.