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arXiv:2102.00341 · Journal of Physics B Atomic Molecular and Optical Physics

Single-site Rydberg addressing in 3D atomic arrays for quantum computing with neutral atoms

Xiao-Feng Shi

Published Dec 6, 2019• 13 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Abstract Neutral atom arrays are particularly promising for large-scale quantum computing because it is possible to prepare large-scale qubit arrays. An unsolved issue is how to selectively excite one qubit deep in a 3D atomic array to Rydberg states. In this work, we show two methods for this purpose. The first method relies on a well-known result: in a dipole transition between two quantum states driven by two off-resonant fields of equal strength but opposite detunings ±Δ, the transition is characterized by two counter-rotating Rabi frequencies Ω e ± i Δ t (or ± Ω e ± i Δ t if the two fields have a π -phase difference). This pair of detuned fields lead to a time-dependent Rabi frequency 2 Ω cos ( Δ t ) (or 2 i Ω sin ( Δ t ) ), so that a full transition between the two levels is recovered. We show that when the two detuned fields are sent in different directions, one atom in a 3D optical lattice can be selectively addressed for Rydberg excitation, and when its state is restored, the state of any nontarget atoms irradiated in the light path is also restored. Moreover, we find that the Rydberg excitation by this method can significantly suppress the fundamental blockade error of a Rydberg gate, paving the way for a high-fidelity entangling gate with a commonly used quasi-rectangular pulse that is easily obtained by pulse pickers. Along the way, we find a second method for single-site Rydberg addressing in 3D, where a selected target atom can be excited to the Rydberg state while preserving the state of any nontarget atom due to a spin-echo sequence. The capability to selectively address a target atom in 3D atomic arrays for Rydberg excitation makes it possible to design a large-scale neutral-atom information processor based on the Rydberg blockade.

DOI
10.1088/1361-6455/ab5f79

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Abstract Neutral atom arrays are particularly promising for large-scale quantum computing because it is possible to prepare large-scale qubit arrays. An unsolved issue is how to selectively excite one qubit deep in a 3D atomic array to Rydberg states. In this work, we show two methods for this purpose. The first method relies on a well-known result: in a dipole transition between two quantum states driven by two off-resonant fields of equal strength but opposite detunings ±Δ, the transition is characterized by two counter-rotating Rabi frequencies Ω e ± i Δ t (or ± Ω e ± i Δ t if the two fields have a π -phase difference). This pair of detuned fields lead to a time-dependent Rabi frequency 2 Ω cos ( Δ t ) (or 2 i Ω sin ( Δ t ) ), so that a full transition between the two levels is recovered. We show that when the two detuned fields are sent in different directions, one atom in a 3D optical lattice can be selectively addressed for Rydberg excitation, and when its state is restored, the state of any nontarget atoms irradiated in the light path is also restored. Moreover, we find that the Rydberg excitation by this method can significantly suppress the fundamental blockade error of a Rydberg gate, paving the way for a high-fidelity entangling gate with a commonly used quasi-rectangular pulse that is easily obtained by pulse pickers. Along the way, we find a second method for single-site Rydberg addressing in 3D, where a selected target atom can be excited to the Rydberg state while preserving the state of any nontarget atom due to a spin-echo sequence. The capability to selectively address a target atom in 3D atomic arrays for Rydberg excitation makes it possible to design a large-scale neutral-atom information processor based on the Rydberg blockade.
Rydberg-based two-qubit gate fidelities in neutral atom arrays are limited chiefly by laser intensity inhomogeneity and by detuning errors from frequency miscalibration, background-field drift, intermediate state light shift and Doppler shifts. Quantum optimal control can suppress the former, but no pulse can render a controlled-Z gate first-order insensitive to detuning. Here we show that this obstruction can be circumvented by designing Rydberg gate pulses with every leading-order detuning error relegated to single-qubit Z-rotations, which an echoed sequence removes. The resulting maximally-entangling ZZ gate has no leading-order response to arbitrary detunings on either atom, maintaining an infidelity below 10−310^{-3}10−3 within a much wider range of single-atom detunings than the time-optimal gates. We further show that a large fraction of residual error is dominated by population outside the computational subspace, which can be converted into heralded erasures. Our results significantly reduce the requirements on laser frequency stability and intensity homogeneity, field calibration and atomic temperature toward practical fault-tolerant quantum computing with neutral atoms.
Neutral atoms trapped and manipulated by laser light provide experimentally well accessible quantum systems allowing for a high degree of control over external and internal degrees of freedom. Arrays of dipole traps in which the atoms are confined individually in a configurable geometry constitute a versatile platform for quantum simulation and information applications. By exciting these atoms into Rydberg states, interactions of variable strength and range can be introduced into the system, allowing for the implementation of entangling gate operations or spin Hamiltonians. A crucial requirement for these schemes to function in a reliable way is the ability to create defect-free arrays of single atoms. This is generally a challenge in these types of systems, as common atom loading schemes are limited to roughly 50% probability of filling each site. In this work, a technique for the rearrangement of atoms within a scalable architecture based on micro-optical lens arrays was developed and implemented, resulting in the creation of uniformly filled regions containing more than 100 atoms, which represent the largest defect-free structures realized so far in systems of this kind. This was accomplished by filling the empty traps in a pre-defined pattern with an atom one by one using an optical tweezer. Thus, structures with up to 5 x 5 atoms could be rendered defect-free in more than 99% of attempts. Although the success rate drops below unity for larger clusters, a value of 3.1% for a 100-atom structure is still viable for experiments working with post-selection methods. The filling fraction of even the largest examined structures was observed to be higher than 88%, surpassing common loading schemes by a significant margin. The measurements presented in this thesis build on a region of the array containing 361 sites, being limited by available laser power. In contrast, the addressable range of the optical tweezer includes more than 1500 sites and microlens arrays with up to a million lenses are commercially available. By implementing coherent Rydberg excitation of this assembled atom array, significant progress toward a universal quantum computer or flexible quantum simulator has been made. Using a two-photon excitation scheme, coherent dynamics between the ground and Rydberg state could be observed simultaneously in a 5 x 5 region of the array, with two-photon Rabi frequencies on the order of Omega = 2Pi x 500kHz measured for a Rydberg laser beam waist of w_0,B = 18.7(10) µm. The choice of an appropriate Rydberg state and interatomic spacing led to the presence of strong nearest-neighbor interactions and allowed for the demonstration of the Rydberg blockade effect by observing a collective enhancement of the Rabi frequency consistent with the expected scaling ~ sqrt(N) as well as the suppression of multiple excitations. This mechanism represents the fundamental constituent of a two-qubit gate operation. The architecture introduced in this work offers a scalability unique among quantum simulation platforms and the presented results underpin its potential to propel the atom-optical approach for quantum information processing beyond the threshold of quantum supremacy. Different approaches for scaling up the system have been explored, indicating that defect-free structures of more than 1000 atoms are within range with feasible experimental improvements. Through a detailed analysis of the factors limiting the coherence of the observed dynamics, strategies for future experimental improvements have been developed. Among these, increasing the coupling strength to the Rydberg state into the megahertz regime by increasing laser power and implementing single-site addressing represents the most straight-forward and promising approach.
Arrays of qubits encoded in the ground-state manifold of neutral atoms trapped in optical (or magnetic) lattices appear to be a promising platform for the realization of a scalable quantum computer. Two-qubit conditional gates between nearest-neighbor qubits in the array can be implemented by exploiting the Rydberg blockade mechanism, as was shown by D. Jaksch et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 85, 2208 (2000)]. However, the energy shift due to dipole-dipole interactions causing the blockade falls off rapidly with the interatomic distance, and protocols based on direct Rydberg blockade typically fail to operate between atoms separated by more than one lattice site. In this work, we propose an extension of the protocol of Jaksch et al. for controlled-ZZZ and controlled-not gates which works in the general case where the qubits are not nearest neighbors in the array. Our proposal relies on the Rydberg excitation hopping along a chain of ancilla noncoding atoms connecting the qubits on which the gate is to be applied. The dependence of the gate fidelity on the number of ancilla atoms, the blockade strength, and the decay rates of the Rydberg states is investigated. A comparison between our implementation of a distant controlled-not gate and one based on a sequence of nearest-neighbor two-qubit gates is also provided.
Abstract Multi-qubit quantum gates are the most important building blocks for quantum computation. In this article, we propose a scheme for realizing the Toffoli gate in a linear neutral atom array. Two ground-state hyperfine levels of the atoms are considered as qubit states. Our method relies on the strong and long-range interactions between atoms due to Rydberg excitations and the occurrence of dark states in the target qubit, with both control and target qubits being individually addressed with laser pulses. Our gate protocol enables precise control over the quantum states of individual qubits, effectively suppressing undesirable transitions to ensure high-fidelity gate performance. We also implement two-atom Rydberg antiblockade mechanism to avoid any unwanted population blockage in the control atoms to get the best fidelity. At zero temperature, the gate fidelity is estimated to be about 99.16% for realistic laser power omitting the motional state of the atoms when the interatomic distance ( l ) 6.55 μ m. We construct a C n NOT gate with n > 2 in a 2D atomic array by exploiting the n -atom Rydberg antiblockade (RAB) mechanism, which allows n atoms within the blockade radius to be simultaneously excited to the Rydberg states. In particular, we simulate C 3 NOT gate with about 98.37 % fidelity. We further analyze the gate error by decreasing the interatomic distance and find that gate fidelity improves more rapidly for larger n with increased interaction potential. We find that more than 99 % fidelity can be achieved for C 3 NOT gate for l < 6.2 μ m, implying that our proposed scheme promising and reliable for multi-qubit controlled NOT gates. For a finite temperature ( ∼ 30 μ K), including the Doppler dephasing, we simulate our gates to achieve 98.90% and 98.54 % fidelity for the Toffoli gate and C 3
Precise individual addressing of single atoms in quantum registers formed by optical trap arrays is essential to achieve high-fidelity quantum gates in neutral-atom quantum computers and simulators. Two-qubit quantum gates are typically implemented using coherent two-photon laser excitation of atoms to strongly interacting Rydberg states. However, two-photon excitation encounters challenges in individual addressing with tightly focused laser beams due to atom position uncertainty and the spatial inhomogeneity in both Rabi frequencies and light shifts. In this work, we theoretically demonstrate that the fidelity of individual addressing is significantly enhanced by employing coherent three-photon laser excitation of Rydberg states. For a specific example of $5{s}_{1/2}\stackrel{{\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Omega}}}_{1}}{\ensuremath{\rightarrow}}5{p}_{3/2}\stackrel{{\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Omega}}}_{2}}{\ensuremath{\rightarrow}}7{s}_{1/2}\stackrel{{\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Omega}}}_{3}}{\ensuremath{\rightarrow}}np$ excitation in 87Rb^{87}\mathrm{Rb}87Rb atoms, we find that upon strong laser coupling in the second step (Rabi frequency ${\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Omega}}}_{2}$) and moderate coupling in the first and third steps (Rabi frequencies ${\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Omega}}}_{1}$ and ${\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Omega}}}_{3}$), the three-photon Rabi frequency is given by $\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Omega}}={\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Omega}}}_{1}{\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Omega}}}_{3}/{\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Omega}}}_{2}$. If the spatial distributions of $({\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Omega}}}_{1}{\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Omega}}}_{3})$ and ${\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Omega}}}_{2}$ are arranged to be identical, $\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Omega}}$ becomes independent of atom position, even within very tightly focused laser beams. This approach dramatically improves individual addressing of Rydberg excitation for neighboring atoms in trap arrays compared to conventional two-photon excitation schemes. Our findings are crucial for large-scale quantum registers of neutral atoms, where distances between adjacent atoms should be minimized to ensure stronger Rydberg interactions and compact arrangement of atom arrays.
With the advent of laser cooling and trapping, neutral atoms have become a foundational source of accuracy for applications in metrology and are showing great potential for their use as qubits in quantum information. In metrology, neutral atoms provide the most accurate references for the measurement of time and acceleration. The unsurpassed stability provided by these systems make neutral atoms an attractive avenue to explore applications in quantum information and computing. However, to fully investigate the field of quantum information, we require a method to generate entangling interactions between neutral-atom qubits. Recent progress in the use of highly-excited Rydberg states for strong dipolar interactions has shown great promise for controlled entanglement using the Rydberg blockade phenomenon. I report the use of singly-trapped cesium atoms as qubits for applications in metrology and quantum information. Each atom provides a physical basis for a single qubit by encoding the required information into the ground-state hyperfine structure of cesium. Through the manipulation of these qubits with microwave and optical frequency sources, we demonstrate the capacity for arbitrary single-qubit control by driving qubit rotations in three orthogonal directions on the Bloch sphere. With this control, we develop an atom interferometer that far surpasses the force sensitivity of other approaches by applying the well-established technique of light-pulsed atom-matterwave interferometry to single atoms. Following this, we focus on two-qubit interactions using highly-excited Rydberg states. Through the development of a unique single-photon approach to Rydberg excitation using an ultraviolet laser at 319 nm, we observe the Rydberg blockade interaction between atoms separated by 6.6(3) microns. Motivated by the observation of Rydberg blockade, we study the application of Rydberg-dressed states for a quantum controlled-phase gate. Using a realistic simulation of the dressed-state dynamics, we calculate a controlled-phase gate fidelity of 94% that is primarily limited by Doppler frequency shifts. Finally, we employ our single-photon excitation laser to measure the Rydberg-dressed interaction, thus demonstrating the viability of this approach.