Programmable Quantum Simulators with Trapped Ions

Ion trap quantum computer and simulator systems have essentially perfect idle qubit/spin coherence properties with fully-connected and reconfigurable entanglement operations. The frontiers of this platform have thus expanded from the physics of qubits and gates to the engineering of optical control signals, the efficient compilation of quantum gates and Hamiltonians, the mitigation of errors in software, and demonstrations of algorithms and quantum simulations that touch many areas of science. I will present recent results in all of these fronts with state-of-the-art ion trap quantum computer systems and simulators, from both the Duke Quantum Center and IonQ, Inc. This includes high fidelity operations among many-qubits, a newly discovered scheme for single-step many body Hamiltonian operations, simulations of exotic phases of magnetism, and the outlook for further scaling of ion trap quantum computers based on a well-defined and modular architecture.