Trapping Ca+ inside a molecular cavity: computational study of the potential energy surfaces for Ca+-[n]cycloparaphenylene, n = 5–12

Abstract

Ion trap quantum computing utilizes electronic states of atomic ions such as Ca⁺ to encode information on to a qubit. To explore the fundamental properties of Ca⁺ inside molecular cavities, we describe here a computational study of Ca⁺ bound inside neutral [n]-cycloparaphenylenes (n = 5–12), often referred to as “nanohoops”. This ab initio study characterizes optimized structures, harmonic vibrational frequencies, potential energy surfaces, and ion molecular orbital distortion as functions of increasing nanohoop size. The results of this work provide a first step in guiding experimental studies of the spectroscopy of these ion-molecular cavity complexes.