ITN Newsletter – March 2026

Foreword

Dear Ion Trappers,

We’re truly grateful for the ongoing engagement from the iontrap community, who keep the conversation lively by sharing their latest news, events, jobs, publications, and editorials. Visit the ITN-Website (https://iontraps.net/) where you can download the current and archived issues and send us your submissions and events directly using the forms. Please continue to send us your thoughts; your contributions make our newsletter vibrant and enriching.

Events

EFTF 2026 – European Frequency and Time Forum

April 20–23, 2026

ESA ESTEC, Noordwijk, Netherlands

Asian Conference on Trapped Ions 2026 (ACTI 2026)

April 20–22, 2026

Singapore

CLEO 2026 – Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics

May 17–21, 2026

Charlotte, North Carolina, USA

Technical Conference: May 19–20, 2026

International Conference on Precision Physics of Simple Atomic Systems (PSAS)

May 18–22, 2026

Vienna, Austria

57th Conference of the European Group on Atomic Systems (EGAS57)

June 21–25, 2026

Toruń, Poland

ICAP 2026 – International Conference on Atomic Physics

June 14–19, 2026

Wuhan, China

ICAP Satellite Meeting: Fundamental Constants and Physics Beyond the Standard Model

June 22–24, 2026

Hefei, China

YAO 2026 – Young Atom Opticians Conference

June 7–13, 2026

Crete, Greece

14th European Frequency and Time Seminar (EFTS)

June 29 – July 3, 2026

Besançon, France

30th Central European Workshop on Quantum Optics (CEWQO30)

July 20–24, 2026

Erlangen, Germany

Quantum Computing User Forum 2026

July 20–24, 2026

Oak Ridge, USA

Quantum Science Gordon Research Conference

July 26–31, 2026

Easton, Massachusetts, USA

QSim2026 – Quantum Simulation Conference

August 10–14, 2026

Amsterdam, Netherlands

Early Career Conference in Trapped Ions (ECCTI) 2026

September 6–11, 2026

Oxford, United Kingdom

HCI 2026 – International Conference on the Physics of Highly Charged Ions

September 7–11, 2026

Huizhou, China

TCP2026 – Conference on Trapped Charged Particles and Fundamental Physics

September 13–18, 2026

Location TBA

German Conference on Women in Physics 2026

September 28–30, 2026

RPTU Kaiserslautern, Germany

Les Houches School on Cold Atoms and Ions: Measurement and Dissipation

October 26 – November 6, 2026

Les Houches, France

Jobs

Postdoc position in theoretical astrophysics at the Technische Universität Braunschweig, Germany. The position is initially available for 1.5 years.

https://www.tu-braunschweig.de/en/theophys/vacancies

Postdoc Position on Photonic Integrated Ion Traps available at the University of Hannover / Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt.

https://www.quantummetrology.de/quaccs/home/

The Quantum Science Branch at ARL is seeking an experimental researcher to lead a basic research program in trapped-ion quantum science or Rydberg-based quantum sensing. This is a full-time, on-site position. U.S. citizenship is required. Applications will be accepted until the position is filled, with first consideration given to applications received by June 1, 2026.

Contact: joseph.w.britton5.civ@army.mil (reference: search2026irpi)

A tenure-track staff scientist position is available in the Ion Trap Quantum Computing group at the ETH Zürich–PSI Quantum Computing Hub.

https://www.psi.ch/en/hr/job-opportunities/74174-scientist-tenure-track-in-ion-trap-quantum-computing-80-100

Takanori Nishi

2026 J. Phys. B: At. Mol. Opt. Phys. 59 035502

Bridging quantum computing and nuclear structure: Atomic nuclei on a trapped-ion quantum computer

Sota Yoshida, Takeshi Sato, Takumi Ogata, and Masaaki Kimura

Phys. Rev. Research 8, 013134 (2026)

Characterization of the 1st Mathieu stability regime in auto-ponderomotive Paul-trap-like electron guides

F. D. F. Schmidt-Kaler, N. R. Bode, M. Seidling, R. Zimmermann, J. Walther, P. Hommelhoff

Journal: Applied Physics Letters

Appl. Phys. Lett. 128, 031102 (2026)

Characterizing Physical and Logical Errors in a Transversal CNOT Gate via Cycle Error Reconstruction

Nicholas Fazio, Robert Freund, Debankan Sannamoth, Alex Steiner, Christian D. Marciniak, Manuel Rispler, Robin Harper, Thomas Monz, Joseph Emerson, and Stephen D. Bartlett

Phys. Rev. X 16, 011030 (2026)

Chip scale coil stabilized Brillouin laser driving a room temperature trapped ion qubit

Nitesh Chauhan, Christopher Caron, Andrei Isichenko, Meiting Song, Zhenyu Wei, Nishat Helaly, Kaikai Liu, Jiawei Wang, Robert J. Niffenegger & Daniel J. Blumenthal

Nature Communications , Article number: (2026)

Compatibility of Trapped Ions and Dielectrics at Cryogenic Temperatures

M. Bruff, L. Sonderhouse, K. N. David, J. Stuart, D. H. Slichter, and D. Leibfried

Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 093204 (2026)

Design and characterization of a cryogenic vacuum chamber for ion trapping experiments

Featured

D. M. Hartsell, J. M. Gray, C. M. Shappert, N. L. Gostin, R. A. McGill, H. N. Tinkey, C. R. Clark, K. R. Brown

Journal: Applied Physics Letters

Appl. Phys. Lett. 128, 034001 (2026)

Dispersive topological bound states in the continuum for controllable quantum-state transport in three-state discrete-time quantum walks

Zahra Jalali-Mola and Ortwin Hess

Phys. Rev. Research 8, 013271 (2026)

Liquid-Nitrogen-Cooled 40⁢Ca+ Ion Optical Clock with a Systematic Uncertainty of 4.4×10−19

Bao-lin Zhang, Zi-xiao Ma, Yao Huang, Hui-li Han, Ru-ming Hu, Yu-zhuo Wang, Hua-qing Zhang, Li-yan Tang, Ting-yun Shi, Hua Guan, and Ke-lin Gao

Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 053202 (2026) –

Logical quantum phase estimation for x-ray absorption spectra

Hirofumi Nishi, Taichi Kosugi, Satoshi Hirose, Tatsuya Okayama, and Yu-ichiro Matsushita

Phys. Rev. Applied 25, 034026 (2026)

Nonparaxial effects on laser-qubit operations

Louis P. H. Gallagher, Matteo Mazzanti, Zeger E. D. Ackerman, Arghavan Safavi-Naini, Rene Gerritsma, and Robert J. C. Spreeuw

Phys. Rev. Research 8, 013077 (2026)

Parametric amplification of spin-motion coupling in three-dimensional trapped-ion crystals

Samarth Hawaldar, N. Nikhil, Ana Maria Rey, John J. Bollinger, and Athreya Shankar

Phys. Rev. Applied 25, 034004 (2026)

Practical noise mitigation for quantum annealing via dynamical decoupling: Toward industry-relevant optimization using trapped ions

Sebastian Nagies, Chiara Capecci, Marcel Seelbach Benkner, Javed Akram, Sebastian Rubbert, Dimitrios Bantounas, Michael Moeller, Michael Johanning, and Philipp Hauke

Phys. Rev. A 113, 012621 (2026)

Quantum Annealing Algorithms for Estimating Ising Partition Functions

Haowei Li, Zhiyuan Yao, and Xingze Qiu

Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 100601 (2026) –

Quantum gate dynamics beyond the rotating wave approximation using multitimescale quantum averaging theory

Kristian D. Barajas and Wesley C. Campbell

Phys. Rev. A 113, L030403 (2026)

Resource estimation for entanglement routing in quantum networks

Manik Dawar, Ralf Riedinger, Nilesh Vyas, and Paulo Mendes

Phys. Rev. A 113, 022622 (2026) –

Robustness of near-thermal dynamics on digital quantum computers

Eli Chertkov, Yi-Hsiang Chen, Michael Lubasch, David Hayes, and Michael Foss-Feig

Phys. Rev. Research 8, 013255 (2026)

Stabilization of Cat-State Manifolds Using Nonlinear Reservoir Engineering

Ivan Rojkov, Matteo Simoni, Elias Zapusek, Florentin Reiter, and Jonathan Home

Phys. Rev. X 16, 011056 (2026)

Super-Poissonian squeezed light in the deep-strong-coupling regime of the quantum Rabi model

Chon-Fai Kam and Xuedong Hu

Phys. Rev. A 113, 033718 (2026)

Authors: Nikita Poljakov, Jan Schaper, Julia-Aileen Coenders, Philipp Luca Hoffmann, Juan Manuel Cornejo, Klemens Hammerer, Stefan Ulmer, Christian Ospelkaus

Analysis of the action of conventional trapped-ion entangling gates in qudit space

Authors: Pavel Kamenskikh, Nikita Semenin, Ilia Zalivako, Vasiliy Smirnov, Ilya Semerikov, Ksenia Khabarova, Nikolay Kolachevsky

Characterization of Inner Control Electrode Shapes for Multi-Layer Surface-Electrode Ion Traps

Authors: Florian Ungerechts, Brigitte Kaune, Christian Ospelkaus

Characterization and active cancellation of power-line-induced motional-mode frequency noise in a trapped-ion system

Authors: Jaehun You, Jiyong Kang, Kyunghye Kim, Wonhyeong Choi, Taehyun Kim

Computing with many encoded logical qubits beyond break-even

Authors: Shival Dasu, Matthew DeCross, Andrew Y. Guo, Ali Lavasani, Jan Behrends, Asmae Benhemou, Yi-Hsiang Chen, Karl Mayer, Chris N. Self, Selwyn Simsek, Basudha Srivastava, M. S. Allman, Jake Arkinstall, Justin G. Bohnet, Nathaniel Q. Burdick, J. P. Campora III, Alex Chernoguzov, Samuel F. Cooper, Robert D. Delaney, Joan M. Dreiling, Brian Estey, Caroline Figgatt, Cameron Foltz, John P. Gaebler, Alex Hall , et al. (20 additional authors not shown)

Engineering near-unitary one-axis twisting evolution via a driven Tavis-Cummings model

Authors: Jinfeng Liu, Yan Mu, Lili Song, Gang Liu, Mingfeng Wang

Entanglement distillation based on Hamiltonian dynamics

Authors: Zitai Xu, Guoding Liu

Entangling ions with engineered light gradients

Authors: Tommaso Faorlin, Lorenz Panzl, Phoebe Grosser, Pablo Viñas, Alan Kahan, Walter Joseph Hörmann, Yannick Weiser, Giovanni Cerchiari, Thomas Feldker, Alexander Erhard, Juris Ulmanis, Rainer Blatt, Alejandro Bermudez, Thomas Monz

Experimental characterization of coherent and non-Markovian errors using tangent space decomposition

Authors: Elia Perego, Andrea Rodriguez-Blanco, K. Birgitta Whaley, Bharath Hebbe Madhusudhana

Fault-tolerant execution of error-corrected quantum algorithms

Authors: Michael A. Perlin, Zichang He, Anthony Alexiades Armenakas, Pablo Andres-Martinez, Tianyi Hao, Dylan Herman, Yuwei Jin, Karl Mayer, Chris Self, David Amaro, Ciaran Ryan-Anderson, Ruslan Shaydulin

Full Single-Quantum Control of Particles in Penning Traps for Symmetry Tests at the Quantum Limit

Authors: J. M. Cornejo, J. -A. Coenders, A. Lissel, N. Poljakov, M. Prasse, Y. Priewich, J. Schaper, M. Schubert, B. Hampel, M. Schilling, S. Ulmer, C. Ospelkaus

Heterogeneous entanglement between a trapped ion and a solid-state quantum memory

Authors: Chen-Xu Wang, Yi-Yang Wang, Tian-Xiang Zhu, Qing-Quan Yao, Peng-Jun Liang, Yuan-Cong Li, Zi-Peng Liu, Ran He, Yong-Jian Han, Jin-Ming Cui, Zong-Quan Zhou, Yun-Feng Huang, Chuan-Feng Li, Guang-Can Guo

Heuristics for Shuttling Sequence Optimization for a Linear Segmented Trapped-Ion Quantum Computer

Authors: J. Durandau, C. A. Brunet, F. Schmidt-Kaler, U. Poschinger, F. Mailhot, Y. Bérubé-Lauzière

Hybridlane: A Software Development Kit for Hybrid Continuous-Discrete Variable Quantum Computing

Authors: Jim Furches, Timothy J. Stavenger, Carlos Ortiz Marrero

Ion-atom two-qubit quantum gate based on phonon blockade

Authors: Subhra Mudli, Bimalendu Deb

Large-scale portfolio optimization on a trapped-ion quantum computer

Authors: Alejandro Gomez Cadavid, Ananth Kaushik, Pranav Chandarana, Miguel Angel Lopez-Ruiz, Gaurav Dev, Willie Aboumrad, Qi Zhang, Claudio Girotto, Sebastián V. Romero, Martin Roetteler, Enrique Solano, Marco Pistoia, Narendra N. Hegade

Long-time storage of entangled logical states in decoherence-free subspaces

Authors: L. Zhang, Y. -L. Xu, Y. -K. Wu, C. Zhang, Z. -B. Cui, Y. -Y. Chen, W. -Q. Lian, J. -Y. Ma, B. -X. Qi, Y. -F. Pu, Z. -C. Zhou, L. He, P. -Y. Hou, L. -M. Duan

Long-lived metastable states in the 4f135d6s configuration of Yb+

Authors: Z. E. D. Ackerman, A. Cadarso Quevedo, Ilango Maran, L. P. H. Gallagher, R. J. C. Spreeuw, J. C. Berengut, R. Gerritsma

Measurement-Free Ancilla Recycling via Blind Reset: A Cross-Platform Study on Superconducting and Trapped-Ion Processors

Authors: Sangkeum Lee

Non-Abelian Aharonov-Bohm Caging in Synthetic Dimensions with a Trapped Ion

Authors: Wanchao Yao, Sai Li, Zhiyuan Liu, Yi Li, Zihan Xie, Xingyu Zhao, Xu Cheng, Yue Li, Zheng-Yuan Xue, Yiheng Lin

Nonlinear Phase Gates Beyond the Lamb-Dicke Regime

Authors: Akram Kasri, Kimin Park, Radim Filip

Off-line Commissioning of the St. Benedict Radio Frequency Quadrupole Ion Guide

Authors: R. Zite, M. Brodeur, O. Bruce, D. Gan, P. D. O’Malley, W. S. Porter, F. Rivero

Optimizing Doppler laser cooling protocols for quantum sensing with 3D ion crystals in a Penning trap

Authors: John Zaris, Wes Johnson, Athreya Shankar, John J. Bollinger, Allison L. Carter, Daniel H. E. Dubin, Scott E. Parker

Predicting the energies of Cf17+ for an optical clock

Authors: S. G. Porsev, M. S. Safronova

Programmable quantum simulation of anharmonic dynamics

Authors: Cameron McGarry, Teerawat Chalermpusitarak, Kai Schwennicke, Frank Scuccimarra, Maverick J. Millican, Vassili G. Matsos, Christophe H. Valahu, Prachi Nagpal, Hon-Kwan Chan, Henry L. Nourse, Ivan Kassal, Ting Rei Tan

Quantum anomaly for benchmarking quantum computing

Authors: Tomoya Hayata, Arata Yamamoto

Quantum-logic spectroscopy of forbidden vibrational transitions in single nitrogen molecular ions

Authors: Aleksandr Shlykov, Meissa L. Diouf, Richard Karl, Mikolaj Roguski, Umesh C. Joshi, Stefan Willitsch

Radio-Frequency Side-Channel Analysis of a Trapped-Ion Quantum Computer

Authors: Giorgio Grigolo, Dorian Schiffer, Lukas Gerster, Martin Ringbauer, Paul Erker

Regularized Warm-Started Quantum Approximate Optimization and Conditions for Surpassing Classical Solvers on the Max-Cut Problem

Authors: Zichang He, Anuj Apte, Brandon Augustino, Arman Babakhani, Abid Khan, Sivaprasad Omanakuttan, Ruslan Shaydulin

Remote Entanglement in Lattice Surgery: To Distill, or Not to Distill

Authors: Sitong Liu, John Stack, Ke Sun, Roel Van Beeumen, Inder Monga, Katherine Klymko, Kenneth R. Brown, Erhan Saglamyurek

Rovibrational energy levels of H2O by quantum computing

Authors: Erik Lötstedt, Tamás Szidarovszky

Single-ion phonon laser in the quantum regime

Authors: Dong Yuanzhang, He Siwen, Deng Zhijiao, Li Peidong, Chen Liang, Feng Mang

State-selected preparation of molecular ions for precision measurements in radio-frequency traps

Authors: Daniel Y. Knapp, Maximilian Beyer

Variational Gibbs State Preparation on Trapped-Ion Devices

Authors: Reece Robertson, Mirko Consiglio, Josey Stevens, Emery Doucet, Tony J. G. Apollaro, Sebastian Deffner

Vertical ion transport in a surface Paul trap: escalator and elevator approaches

Authors: Alexey Russkikh, Nikita Zhadnov

Vibration induced transparency and absorption with two ion ensembles in a linear trap

Authors: Wenjun Shao, Jian Li