A universal qudit quantum processor with trapped ions

Today's quantum computers operate with a binary encoding that is the quantum analog of classical bits. Yet, the underlying quantum hardware consists of information carriers that are not necessarily binary, but typically exhibit a rich multilevel structure, which is artificially restricted to two dimensions. A wide range of applications from quantum chemistry to quantum simulation, on the other hand, would benefit from access to higher-dimensional Hilbert spaces, which conventional quantum computers can only emulate. Here we demonstrate a universal qudit quantum processor using trapped ions with a local Hilbert space dimension of up to 7. With a performance similar to qubit quantum processors, this approach enables native simulation of high-dimensional quantum systems, as well as more efficient implementation of qubit-based algorithms.