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Efficient photon collection from trapped ions is crucial for fast qubit state detection, and for ion-photon and remote ion entanglement protocols. Using high numerical aperture spherical mirrors we aim to achieve 30 - 40% coverage of the solid angle around the ion. Right now, due to the obstruction presented by the trap electrodes, the effective coverage is only about 12% of the solid angle. New trap designs that remove such obstruction will greatly improve light collection.

The high NA spherical optics introduces very strong aberrations distorting the ion image and rendering it unusable for resolving multiple ions in the same trap or for fiber coupling of the ion fluorescence. We designed aspherical corrector elemets that should improve remove most of the aberrations and give near diffraction-limited performance of the optics. .