Abstract Quantum gates and entanglement based on dipole–dipole interactions of neutral Rydberg atoms are relevant to both fundamental physics and quantum information science. The precision and robustness of the Rydberg-mediated entanglement protocols are the key factors limiting their applicability in experiments and near-future industry. There are various methods for generating entangling gates by exploring the Rydberg interactions of neutral atoms, each equipped with its own strengths and weaknesses. The basics and tricks in these protocols are reviewed, with specific attention paid to the achievable fidelity and the robustness to the technical issues and detrimental innate factors.
Abstract Quantum gates and entanglement based on dipole–dipole interactions of neutral Rydberg atoms are relevant to both fundamental physics and quantum information science. The precision and robustness of the Rydberg-mediated entanglement protocols are the key factors limiting their applicability in experiments and near-future industry. There are various methods for generating entangling gates by exploring the Rydberg interactions of neutral atoms, each equipped with its own strengths and weaknesses. The basics and tricks in these protocols are reviewed, with specific attention paid to the achievable fidelity and the robustness to the technical issues and detrimental innate factors.
Neutral atom quantum computing utilizes laser-trapped neutral atoms as qubits and realizes quantum logic gate operations through Rydberg-state interactions. In recent years, it has become one of the most vibrant directions in quantum computing hardware. This paper systematically reviews the working principles of neutral-atom quantum computers, including qubit encoding, atom trapping and manipulation, Rydberg states and interactions, the Rydberg blockade quantum gate mechanism, and atom rearrangement with reconfigurable architectures. The mainstream technical routes are surveyed, represented by optical tweezer arrays combined with Rydberg interactions, optical lattice schemes, and dipole trap arrays. A panoramic review is provided of domestic and international research progress from theoretical foundations in 2000 to the latest achievements in 2026, including thousand-qubit-scale systems, logical qubits, and quantum error correction experiments. Key breakthroughs are highlighted, such as the 6100-atom qubit array, continuous operation of a 3000-qubit system, quantum simulation of the Kitaev honeycomb model, toric code error correction demonstrations, encoding rates exceeding 1/2, and fault-tolerant architectures. The core bottlenecks are analyzed in depth, including the scalability--fidelity trade-off, engineering implementation of quantum error correction, atom loss and mid-circuit replenishment, laser system industrialization, control electronics scalability, and long-distance quantum interconnection. This paper aims to provide a systematic reference for academic research and technological development in this field.
Rydberg atoms with principal quantum number n⪢1 have exaggerated atomic properties including dipole-dipole interactions that scale as n4 and radiative lifetimes that scale as n3. It was proposed a decade ago to take advantage of these properties to implement quantum gates between neutral atom qubits. The availability of a strong long-range interaction that can be coherently turned on and off is an enabling resource for a wide range of quantum information tasks stretching far beyond the original gate proposal. Rydberg enabled capabilities include long-range two-qubit gates, collective encoding of multiqubit registers, implementation of robust light-atom quantum interfaces, and the potential for simulating quantum many-body physics. The advances of the last decade are reviewed, covering both theoretical and experimental aspects of Rydberg-mediated quantum information processing.
Experiments performed within the last year have demonstrated Rydberg state mediated quantum gates and deterministic entanglement between pairs of trapped neutral atoms. These experiments validate ten year old proposals for Rydberg mediated quantum logic, but are only the beginning of ongoing efforts to improve the fidelity of the results obtained and scale the experiments to larger numbers of qubits. We present here a summary of the results to date, along with a critical evaluation of the prospects for higher fidelity Rydberg gates.
In any physical platform, two ingredients are essential for quantum information processing: single-qubit control, and entangling interactions between qubits. Neutral atoms can be individually controlled with high fidelity and are resilient to environmental noise, making them attractive candidates for implementing quantum information protocols. However, achieving strong interactions remains a major obstacle. One way to increase the interaction strength between neutral atoms is to excite them into high-lying Rydberg states, which exhibit large electric dipole moments (and by extension, strong electric dipole-dipole interactions). By slowly ramping up the Rydberg level coupling in a system, one can "dress'' the atomic ground states with some Rydberg character; this maps the Rydberg dipole interaction to an effective interaction between ground states. Such Rydberg-dressed interaction is the focus of this dissertation. After describing the physics of the Rydberg-dressed interaction, we propose three protocols that demonstrate its versatility and provide a framework for considering some of the details of realistic implementation. In all three cases, Rydberg dressing --- along with some form of single-atom control --- is used to generate highly entangled states of interest. Our first proposal relates to the adiabatic model of quantum computing, in which solutions to problems are encoded in the ground states of carefully engineered Hamiltonians. The Rydberg-dressed interaction can provide nonlinear Hamiltonian terms, allowing us to encode NP-hard and other interesting problems. We model this protocol in the presence of decoherence, and find that computational fidelities of ~0.98 for four atoms should be possible with currently realistic experimental parameters. Our second proposal is also related to quantum computing, this time in the circuit model. The Rydberg-dressed interaction can be used to generate a controlled-NOT logic gate which, when interwoven with single-qubit gates, can perform universal quantum computation. Experimentally, noise due to atomic thermal motion has been a primary limitation on the fidelities of these gates. We show that a Doppler-free setup, with counterpropagating lasers, effectively suppresses this type of noise, allowing simulated fidelities of up to ~0.998 per gate. Such strong suppression is only possible because the Doppler-free configuration can harness the natural robustness of adiabatic dressing; other gate schemes using, e.g., resonant pulses, do not exhibit the same degree of improvement. Finally, we consider exploiting the many-body character of the Rydberg-dressed interaction to generate collective entanglement in mesoscopic ensembles of neutral atoms. An atomic ensemble uniformly illuminated by a single Rydberg-exciting laser is isomorphic to the well-known Jaynes-Cummings model. In addition to adapting generic Jaynes-Cummings entanglement protocols developed in other platforms, one can apply microwaves to drive entanglement in a way that is unique to the atomic platform. We prove that by allowing the microwave phase to vary in time, one can generate arbitrary symmetric states of the ensemble. While this method compares favorably with other entanglement protocols in many ways, the required frequency of phase switching presents a fundamental limitation on its effectiveness. To mitigate this, we propose a variant scheme in which parameters are chosen to only allow excitations within the system's dressed-ground subspace; this effectively cuts phase switching demands in half. All three protocols serve to illustrate the power of the Rydberg-dressed interaction and suggest directions for future study.
Rapid, accurate quantum gates are needed for an efficient quantum computer. Among the various physical platforms for logic gates, neutral atoms excited to high-lying states have met with much attention, but have been fundamentally limited by the gate protocol based on the well-known ``blocking'' method. Using a Rydberg interaction to tailor a generalized Rabi oscillation frequency, this study presents a class of exceedingly rapid and accurate two-bit quantum-gate protocols, with implications for quantum control across a wide range of platforms featuring two-body interactions.
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.