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arXiv:2011.09639 · Physical Review A

Photon-recoil and laser-focusing limits to Rydberg gate fidelity

F. Robicheaux, Trent Graham, Mark E. Saffman

Published Feb 24, 2021• 47 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

The authors present an analysis of the limits on two-qubit Rydberg gate fidelity set by the entanglement of internal states and center-of-mass motion due to momentum kicks from the photons from the laser pulses implementing gate operations. They also discuss an approximation which leads to simple analytic formulas that account for the momentum of the photon, atom temperature, harmonic-oscillator frequency, and atomic mass. The results give valuable guidance for designing future experiments.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.103.022424

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The authors present an analysis of the limits on two-qubit Rydberg gate fidelity set by the entanglement of internal states and center-of-mass motion due to momentum kicks from the photons from the laser pulses implementing gate operations. They also discuss an approximation which leads to simple analytic formulas that account for the momentum of the photon, atom temperature, harmonic-oscillator frequency, and atomic mass. The results give valuable guidance for designing future experiments.
We study the implementation of a high fidelity controlled-phase gate in a Rydberg quantum computer. The protocol is based on a symmetric gate with respect to the two qubits as experimentally realized by Levine et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 123, 170503 (2019)], but allows for arbitrary pulse shapes with time-dependent detuning. Optimizing the pulse shapes, we introduce laser pulses which shorten the time spent in the Rydberg state by 10% and reduce the leading contribution to the gate infidelity, i.e., the decay from the Rydberg state. Remarkably, this reduction can be achieved for smooth pulses in detuning and smooth turning on of the Rabi frequency as required in any experimental realization. We carefully analyze the influence of fundamental error sources such as the photon recoil and the microscopic interaction potential, as well as the harmonic trapping of the atoms for an experimentally realistic setup based on strontium-88 atoms. We find that an average gate fidelity above 99.9% is possible for a very conservative estimation of experimental parameters.
We investigate the robustness of two-qubit gates to deviations of experimental controls on a neutral atom platform utilizing Rydberg states. We construct robust controlled-Z gates---employing techniques from quantum optimal control---that retain high Bell-state fidelity F>0.999F>0.999F>0.999 in the presence of significant deviations of the coupling strength to the Rydberg state. Such deviations can arise from laser intensity noise and atomic motion in an inhomogeneous coupling field. We also discuss methods to mitigate errors due to deviations of the laser detuning. The designed pulses operate on timescales that are short compared to the fundamental decay timescale set by spontaneous emission and blackbody radiation. We account for the finite lifetime of the Rydberg state in both the optimization and fidelity calculations---this makes the gates conducive to noisy intermediate-scale quantum experiments, meaning that our protocols can reduce infidelity on near-term quantum computing devices. We calculate physical properties associated with infidelity for strontium-88 atoms---including lifetimes, polarizabilities, and blockade strengths---and use these calculations to identify optimal Rydberg states for our protocols, which allows for further minimization of infidelity.
Neutral atoms in optical tweezer arrays have emerged as a leading platform for quantum information processing. The fidelity of entangling gates mediated by Rydberg interactions has improved rapidly and is increasingly constrained by blackbody-radiation-induced transitions, which shorten Rydberg lifetimes and create contaminant states that can cause correlated errors. Cryogenic environments can suppress these transition rates by more than an order of magnitude. However, realizing a universal gate set in such an environment has remained an outstanding challenge. Here, we demonstrate a universal quantum gate set in a cryogenic 133^{133}133Cs atom array, with a single-qubit gate fidelity of 99.970(2)% and a raw two-qubit entangling-gate fidelity of 99.76(8)%, within the range of leading room-temperature implementations. The entangling gate uses direct single-photon coupling between the electronic ground state and a Rydberg PPP state, avoiding scattering and light shifts associated with two-photon coupling. The gate operates at a modest Rabi frequency of 2π×4.32π\times4.32π×4.3 MHz. The measured fidelity agrees with our error model dominated by atomic motion, indicating a straightforward route to higher fidelity through improved cooling, while the fundamental error contribution from Rydberg decay is below 3×10−43\times10^{-4}3×10−4. These results establish a path to entangling-gate fidelities substantially beyond the current state of the art through cryogenic suppression of Rydberg decay, reducing the overhead for fault-tolerant computation.
We have numerically simulated a two-qubit CZ gate for ultracold neutral atoms based on Rydberg blockade, utilizing three-photon excitation to Rydberg states. The three-photon laser excitation overcomes lack of individual addressability for entangling gates in atomic arrays, which is a key limitation of conventional schemes of quantum information processing with neutral atoms. This is achieved by mitigating sensitivity to laser intensity fluctuations caused by spatial motion of atoms in optical tweezers. Our goal is to investigate the gate performance when three-photon laser excitation is used. We considered Levine-Pichler gate which applies an abrupt phase jump at the center of the control laser pulse. Our simulation accounts for the influence of spontaneous decay of intermediate and Rydberg states and finite Rydberg excitation energies. We obtained the maximum fidelity of the CZ gate around 99.7% for the model based on probability amplitudes and 99.72% for the model based on density matrices. This value exceeds the threshold required for the application of quantum error correction protocols, demonstrating the promise of this gate for experimental realization. This work was supported by BASIS foundation Grant No. № 25-1-1-57-5
Abstract Rydberg quantum gate serving as an indispensable computing unit for neutral-atom quantum computation, has attracted intense research efforts for the last decade. However, the state-of-the-art experiments have not reached the high gate fidelity as predicted by most theories due to the unexpected large loss remaining in Rydberg and intermediate states. In this paper, we report our findings in constructing a native two-qubit controlled-NOT gate based on pulse optimization. We focus on the method of commonly-used two-photon Rydberg excitation with smooth Gaussian-shaped pulses which is straightforward for experimental demonstration. By utilizing optimized pulse shapes the scheme reveals a remarkable reduction in the decays from Rydberg and intermediate states, as well as a high-tolerance to the residual thermal motion of atoms. We extract a conservative lower bound for the gate fidelity >0.9921 after taking into account the experimental imperfections. Our results not only reduce the gap between experimental and theoretical prediction because of the optimal control, but also facilitate the connectivity of distant atomic qubits in a larger atom array by reducing the requirement of strong blockade, which is promising for developing multiqubit quantum computation in large-scale atomic arrays.
We present experimental results on two-qubit Rydberg-blockade quantum gates and entanglement in a two-dimensional qubit array. Without postselection against atom loss we achieve a Bell state fidelity of $0.73\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}0.05$. The experiments are performed in an array of single Cs atom qubits with a site to site spacing of $3.8\phantom{\rule{0.28em}{0ex}}\ensuremath{\mu}\mathrm{m}$. Using the standard protocol for a Rydberg-blockade CZ{C}_{Z}CZ​ gate together with single qubit operations we create Bell states and measure their fidelity using parity oscillations. We analyze the role of ac Stark shifts that occur when using two-photon Rydberg excitation and show how to tune experimental conditions for optimal gate fidelity.