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arXiv:1606.08516 · Physical Review A

Annulled van der Waals interaction and fast Rydberg quantum gates

Xiaofeng Shi, T. A. B. Kennedy

Published Apr 28, 2017• 30 citations
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Abstract

A pair of neutral atoms separated by several microns and prepared in identical $s$ states of large principal quantum number experience a van der Waals interaction. If microwave fields are used to generate a superposition of $s$ states with different principal quantum numbers, a null point may be found at which a specific superposition state experiences no van der Waals interaction. An application of this Rydberg state in a quantum controlled-z gate is proposed, which takes advantage of GHz rate transitions to nearby Rydberg states. A gate operation time in the tens of nanoseconds is predicted.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.95.043429

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A pair of neutral atoms separated by several microns and prepared in identical sss states of large principal quantum number experience a van der Waals interaction. If microwave fields are used to generate a superposition of sss states with different principal quantum numbers, a null point may be found at which a specific superposition state experiences no van der Waals interaction. An application of this Rydberg state in a quantum controlled-z gate is proposed, which takes advantage of GHz rate transitions to nearby Rydberg states. A gate operation time in the tens of nanoseconds is predicted.
A pair of neutral atoms separated by several microns and prepared in identical s-states of large principal quantum number experience a van der Waals interaction. If microwave fields are used to generate a superposition of s-states with different principal quantum numbers, a null point may be found at which a specific superposition state experiences no van der Waals interaction. An application of this novel Rydberg state in a quantum controlled-Z gate is proposed, which takes advantage of GHz rate transitions to nearby Rydberg states. A gate operation time in the tens of nanoseconds is predicted.
Neutral atoms are promising for large-scale quantum computing, but accurate neutral-atom entanglement depends on large Rydberg interactions which strongly limit the interatomic distances. Via a phase accumulation in detuned Rabi cycles enabled by a Rydberg interaction of similar magnitude to the Rydberg Rabi frequency, we study a controlled-phase gate with an arbitrary phase and extend it to the controlled-not gate. The gates need only three steps for coupling one Rydberg state, depend on an easily accessible van der Waals interaction that naturally arises between distant atoms, and have no rotation error in the weak interaction regime. Importantly, they can work with very weak interactions so that well-separated qubits can be entangled. The gates are sensitive to the irremovable fluctuation of Rydberg interactions, but can still have a fidelity over 98% with realistic position fluctuation of qubits separated over 20 $\ensuremath{\mu}\mathrm{m}$.
The advent of digital neutral-atom quantum computers relies on the development of fast and robust protocols for high-fidelity quantum operations. In this work, we introduce a novel scheme for entangling gates using four atomic levels per atom: a ground-state qubit and two Rydberg states. A laser field couples the qubit to one of the two Rydberg states, while a microwave field drives transitions between the two Rydberg states, enabling a resonant dipole-dipole interaction between different atoms. We show that controlled- Z gates can be realized in this scheme without requiring optical phase modulation and relying solely on a microwave field with time-dependent phase and amplitude. We demonstrate that such gates are faster and less sensitive to Rydberg decay than state-of-the-art Rydberg gates based on van der Waals interactions. Moreover, we systematically stabilize our protocol against interatomic distance fluctuations and analyze its performance in realistic setups with rubidium or cesium atoms. Our results open up new avenues to the use of microwave-driven dipolar interactions for quantum computation with neutral atoms.
We demonstrate finite range binding potentials between pairs of Rydberg atoms interacting with each other via attractive and repulsive van der Waals potentials and driven by a microwave field. We show that, using destructive quantum interference to cancel single-atom Rydberg excitation, the Rydberg-dimer states can be selectively and coherently populated from the two-atom ground state. This can be used to realize a two-qubit interaction gate which is not susceptible to mechanical forces between the atoms and is therefore immune to motional decoherence.
We report the direct measurement of the van der Waals interaction between two isolated, single Rydberg atoms separated by a controlled distance of a few micrometers. Working in a regime where the single-atom Rabi frequency for excitation to the Rydberg state is comparable to the interaction, we observe partial Rydberg blockade, whereby the time-dependent populations of the various two-atom states exhibit coherent oscillations with several frequencies. Quantitative comparison of the data with a simple model based on the optical Bloch equations allows us to extract the van der Waals energy, and observe its characteristic C6/R6 dependence. The measured C6 coefficients agree well with ab initio calculations, and we observe their dramatic increase with the principal quantum number n of the Rydberg state.