Construction of a linear ion trap and engineering controlled spin-motional interactions

This thesis outlines the design and construction of an experimental system for confining and manipulating 171Yb+ ions in a linear trap. The experimental system is used to demonstrate two complementary techniques relating to entangling gates in trapped ions. Firstly, phase-modulated pulse sequences are used to perform motion-mediated entangling gates in a manner that enables robustness to noise, parameter flexibility and the ability to generate entanglement in large ion registers. Secondly, phase- and amplitude-modulated pulse sequences with tuneable noise sensitivity are used to perform spectrally-resolved sensing of fluctuations in the motional frequency of trapped ions. Together, these techniques form a joint framework for the measurement and suppression of error in trapped ion entangling gates