Integrated photonic light delivery in surface-electrode ion traps presents a promising approach for scaling up trapped-ion quantum computing and offers an exciting playground to explore light-matter interaction. Grating couplers enable the creation of diffraction-limited beams with excellent beam-pointing stability. Our surface-trap chip contains two waveguide layers, silicon nitride and aluminum oxide, to span wavelengths from UV to NIR. To maximize the intensity at the ion, it provides a tightly focused beam at 700-800 nm, which we profile using the Stark shift on the ion. To align the beam to the ion, we control the emission angle by tuning the wavelength. With a different emitter at 532 nm we create a Hermite-Gaussian (HG10) beam via an integrated mode converter. This mode is intended to maximize the intensity for a two-ion crystal and it provides a steep field gradient at the central intensity null.

On a separate chip, we exploit the intrinsic phase stability of integrated photonic circuits to generate phase-stable optical lattices. We present ongoing work on engineering superlattices, where lattices of different periods are superimposed into tailored intensity patterns. Overall, our results show how integrated photonic chips can engineer the spatial structure of light.