Revealing Noise in Axial Motion Through Quantum Noise Spectroscopy on a Trapped Ion Processor

Quantum Physics arXiv:2608.04089 (quant-ph) [Submitted on 4 Aug 2026] Title:Revealing Noise in Axial Motion Through Quantum Noise Spectroscopy on a Trapped Ion Processor Authors:Vivian Maloney, Matthew Chow, Leigh Norris, Melissa Revelle, Daniel Lobser, Brian McFarland, Edward Tortorici, Christopher Yale, Susan Clark, Gregory Quiroz View a PDF of the paper titled Revealing Noise in Axial Motion Through Quantum Noise Spectroscopy on a Trapped Ion Processor, by Vivian Maloney and 9 other authors View PDF Abstract:Native noise processes in quantum processors are often difficult to isolate because multiple error mechanisms contribute to the same measured loss of coherence. Here we use dephasing-robust quantum noise spectroscopy to identify and characterize control noise induced by axial motion in an individually-addressed trapped-ion processor. When the ion motion is transverse to the addressing beam, thermal axial motion couples to the beam profile and produces effective amplitude control noise. We show that this noise is governed primarily by the local beam curvature and appears as a low-frequency contribution to the reconstructed control-noise spectrum. By varying the ion position within the beam profile, we separate curvature-dependent axial-motion noise from curvature-independent native control noise and extract motional parameters that are otherwise difficult to access on this platform. We also apply the protocol in parallel to a four-ion register, demonstrating a spectroscopic method for simultaneous characterization of position-dependent control noise across multiple qubits. The results of this study identify beam inflection points as operating regions that suppress axial-motion-induced noise at the cost of reduced Rabi rate, as found in PRX Quantum 3, 010334 (2022). Comments: Subjects: Quantum Physics (quant-ph) Cite as: arXiv:2608.04089 [quant-ph] (or arXiv:2608.04089v1 [quant-ph] for this version) https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2608.04089 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration) Submission history From: Vivian Maloney [view email] [v1] Tue, 4 Aug 2026 18:00:02 UTC (2,098 KB) Full-text links: Access Paper: View a PDF of the paper titled Revealing Noise in Axial Motion Through Quantum Noise Spectroscopy on a Trapped Ion Processor, by Vivian Maloney and 9 other authorsView PDFTeX Source view license Current browse context: quant-ph new | recent | 2026-08 References & Citations INSPIRE HEP NASA ADSGoogle Scholar Semantic Scholar export BibTeX citation Loading... BibTeX formatted citation × loading... Data provided by: Bookmark Bibliographic Tools Bibliographic and Citation Tools Bibliographic Explorer Toggle Bibliographic Explorer (What is the Explorer?) Connected Papers Toggle Connected Papers (What is Connected Papers?) Litmaps Toggle Litmaps (What is Litmaps?) scite.ai Toggle scite Smart Citations (What are Smart Citations?) Code, Data, Media Code, Data and Media Associated with this Article alphaXiv Toggle alphaXiv (What is alphaXiv?) Links to Code Toggle CatalyzeX Code Finder for Papers (What is CatalyzeX?) DagsHub Toggle DagsHub (What is DagsHub?) GotitPub Toggle Gotit.pub (What is GotitPub?) Huggingface Toggle Hugging Face (What is Huggingface?) ScienceCast Toggle ScienceCast (What is ScienceCast?) Demos Demos Replicate Toggle Replicate (What is Replicate?) Spaces Toggle Hugging Face Spaces (What is Spaces?) Spaces Toggle TXYZ.AI (What is TXYZ.AI?) Related Papers Recommenders and Search Tools Link to Influence Flower Influence Flower (What are Influence Flowers?) Core recommender toggle CORE Recommender (What is CORE?) Author Venue Institution Topic About arXivLabs arXivLabs: experimental projects with community collaborators arXivLabs is a framework that allows collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on our website. Both individuals and organizations that work with arXivLabs have embraced and accepted our values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv is committed to these values and only works with partners that adhere to them. Have an idea for a project that will add value for arXiv's community? Learn more about arXivLabs. Which authors of this paper are endorsers? | Disable MathJax (What is MathJax?)