Practical trapped-ion protocols for universal qudit-based quantum computing

The notion of universal quantum computation can be generalized to multilevel qudits, which offer advantages in resource usage and algorithmic efficiencies. Trapped ions, which are pristine and well-controlled quantum systems, offer an ideal platform to develop qudit-based quantum information processing. Previous work has not fully explored the practicality of implementing trapped-ion qudits accounting for known experimental error sources. Here, we describe a universal set of protocols for state preparation, single-qudit gates, a generalization of the Molmer-Sorensen gate for two-qudit gates, and a measurement scheme which utilizes shelving to a metastable state. We numerically simulate known sources of error from previous trapped-ion experiments, and show that there are no fundamental limitations to achieving fidelities above 99% for three-level qudits encoded in Ba-137(+) ions. Our methods are extensible to higher-dimensional qudits, and our measurement and single-qudit gate protocols can achieve 99% fidelities for five-level qudits. We identify avenues to further decrease errors in future work. Our results suggest that three-level trapped-ion qudits will be a useful technology for quantum information processing.