High Fidelity State Preparation and Measurement of Ion Hyperfine Qubits with I>1/2.

We present a method for achieving high fidelity state preparation and measurement (SPAM) using trapped ion hyperfine qubits with nuclear spins higher than I=1/2. The ground states of these higher nuclear spin isotopes do not afford a simple frequency-selective state preparation scheme. We circumvent this limitation by stroboscopically driving strong and weak transitions, blending fast optical pumping using dipole transitions, and narrow microwave or optical quadrupole transitions.