High-fidelity laser-free universal control of two trapped ion qubits

Abstract: Universal control of multiple qubits -- the ability to entangle qubits and to perform arbitrary individual qubit operations -- is a fundamental resource for quantum computation, simulation, and networking. Here, we implement a new laser-free scheme for universal control of trapped ion qubits based on microwave magnetic fields and radiofrequency magnetic field gradients. We demonstrate high-fidelity entanglement and individual control by creating symmetric and antisymmetric two-qubit maximally entangled states with fidelities in the intervals [0.9983, 1] and [0.9964, 0.9988], respectively, at 68% confidence, corrected for state initialization error. This technique is robust against multiple sources of decoherence, usable with essentially any trapped ion species, and has the potential to perform simultaneous entangling operations on many pairs of ions without increasing control signal power or complexity.