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As quantum computing hardware becomes more complex with ongoing design innovations and growing capabilities, the quantum computing community needs increasingly powerful techniques for fabrication failure root-cause analysis. This is especially true for trapped-ion quantum computing. As trapped-ion quantum computing aims to scale to thousands of ions, the electrode numbers are growing to several hundred with likely integrated-photonic components also adding to the electrical and fabrication complexity, making faults even harder to locate. In this work, we used a high-resolution quantum magnetic imaging technique, based on nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centers in diamond, to investigate short-circuit faults in an ion trap chip. We imaged currents from these short-circuit faults to ground and compared to intentionally-created faults, finding that the root-cause of the faults was failures in the on-chip trench capacitors. This work, where we exploited the performance advantages of a quantum magnetic sensing technique to troubleshoot a piece of quantum computing hardware, is a unique example of the evolving synergy between emerging quantum technologies to achieve capabilities that were previously inaccessible., Comment: 8 pages main text; 2 pages supplement

The Phoenix and Peregrine ion traps are micro-fabricated surface-electrode ion traps based on silicon technology. Both are linear traps using a symmetric 6-rail design with segmented inner and outer control electrodes. The traps are fabricated on Sandia's High Optical Access (HOA) platform to provide good optical access skimming the trap surface. They are packaged in custom ceramic pin or land grid array packages using a 2.54 mm pitch. The Peregrine trap is a surface trap with all electrodes in one plane. The Phoenix trap has the same layout, but with a central through-substrate slot and its inner control electrodes are at a lower metal level. Both traps provide means to measure the substrate temperature and to heat the device by means of integrated aluminum and tungsten wires.