![]() MIT LL researchers now look to integrate the chip with the ion trap through a technique that allows them to stack the two chips on top of each other and connect them through vias, or electrical connections between layers. The chip is wire-bonded to the board and protected by the square white plastic cap. Ready for testing: The chip’s custom test board is connected the test equipment. “It also has low voltage noise, so it won’t perturb the quantum state of the ion,” said Hongzhi Sun, the lead chip designer on the project. ![]() Working with a semiconductor manufacturer, the Fermilab team recently created a chip that could control up to nine volts. The difficulty lies in creating a small chip that can control the high voltages needed for the system - at least 20 volts - while both retaining high speed and utilizing low power. Integrating Compact Electronics With the Ion Trap “It’s a project that really leverages the unique capabilities of different government laboratories,” said Robert McConnell, staff scientist at MIT LL who led development of the photonic ion trap chip for the project. “That’s not unlike the electronics needed for controlling atoms and reading out their state.” “We have more than 30 years of experience developing compact electronics for collider physics, and we have developed chips for extreme environments,” Fahim said. ![]() That’s where Fermilab came in DOE’s high-energy physics QuantISED program funded the electronics development and integration. They needed help designing a miniature electronic control system. But to complete the system, MIT LL researchers needed more than just miniaturized atomic and photonic components. Credit: Samantha Koch, Fermilabįunded by the DOD, MIT LL researchers have miniaturized the trapped-ion atomic clock, integrating laser delivery and detection all onto one chip. Perhaps, the researchers considered, dark matter could be detected with a more sensitive clock. But they found no evidence for dark matter in these experiments. Researchers conducted these experiments with GPS satellites, which each contain multiple atomic clocks based on a different technology. Improving Dark Matter Detection Technology If several atomic clocks traveled through a clump of dark matter in space, the dark matter could increase or decrease the photon energy measured by each clock, changing how it “ticks.” The clocks would desynchronize as the dark matter passes and resynchronize thereafter. This sort of compact atomic clock could be ideal for deployment to space to search for ultralight dark matter, which is theorized to cause oscillations in the masses of electrons. A laser acts as the clock’s oscillator, measuring the oscillation frequency of the ion’s transition between two quantized energy levels. MIT LL’s optical atomic clock uses an ion trap as a sensor - in this case, a Strontium ion that is confined by an electrical field. “This is the first step toward a high- accuracy, small footprint atomic clock,” said Fermilab Microelectronics Division Director Farah Fahim, who leads the project for the lab. The chip designed by the Fermilab team is currently under testing at MIT LL. After more than two years of work, the researchers - from the DOE’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Lincoln Laboratory - have reported initial promising results.įermilab researchers designed and developed the compact electronics needed to control the voltages within the device, while MIT LL researchers are developing the tiny ion traps and corresponding photonics needed to build the clock. Department of Energy and Department of Defense project aim to miniaturize these elements to the size of a shoebox. Fermilab researchers Hongzhi Sun and Pamela Klabbers test the chip at the test stand.
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