Linear Ion Chains in Silicon Surface-Electrode Traps

Long chains of equally spaced ions provide an environment for quantum information processing that may be extendable to large- scale quantum information processing and quantum simulation. Such chains may be stably held in tailored anharmonic potentials, a task for which linear surface-electrode traps with many DC electrodes are ideally suited. Here we report progress towards experiments with chains of $^{40}$Ca$^+$ and $^{44}$Ca$^+$, such as splitting and merging of sub-chains, deterministic loading of particular ion- isotope sequences, and measurements of heating and thermalization of ion chains of various lengths.