Design and fabrication of high magnetic field gradients towards fault tolerant two-qubit gates with trapped ions using long-wavelength radiation

In this thesis, I discuss coherent manipulation of a trapped ytterbium ion using long wavelength radiation and the results of experiments towards the performance of a two-ion entanglement gate using a static magnetic field gradient of 23.3(6) T/m to create coupling between an ion's internal state and its motion. After using these experiments to explain the requirements for high-fidelity entanglement operations, I continue by examining existing methods for creating this gradient, the current limiting factor in producing the highest fidelity operations. This includes a full characterisation of the gradients produced by symmetric scheme permanent magnets and buried current carrying wires including development of scaling laws in order to create optimum gradients for a given trap geometry. I continue by proposing a new method by which extremely high gradients over 100 T/m can be created for planar chip traps with minimal modification to an existing experiment. These gradients are tailored for axial as well as radial entanglement schemes and aim to show that the technology exists in order to produce a two-qubit gate over the fault tolerant threshold. Subsequently, I discuss the implementation of this new scheme in an experiment before constructing the apparatus to accurately align a chip with these magnets and documenting their installation into two new experimental setups. This includes a preliminary measurement of the gradient produced by an imperfect setup outside of vacuum which verifies those simulated at ~ 110 T/m. Lastly, I discuss the prospects of on-chip magnetic materials and propose a new method which when sufficiently developed should allow for high magnetic field gradients to be produced on-chip at higher ion heights than when solely using current carrying wires. Additionally this scheme should allow for switchable gradients with maximised stability in geometries previously not possible to create