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arXiv:2212.10159 · Physical Review Research

Robust control and optimal Rydberg states for neutral atom two-qubit gates

Madhav Mohan, Robert de Keijzer, S. J. J. M. F. Kokkelmans

Published Jul 25, 2023• 40 citations
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Abstract

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 $F>0.999$ 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.

DOI
10.1103/physrevresearch.5.033052

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Physical Review Applied•Sep 24, 2024•6 citations
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.
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.
Arrays of optically trapped neutral atoms are an emerging platform for scalable quantum computing, where achieving high-fidelity entangling gates remains a central challenge. We present a systematic analysis of the two-qubit controlled-Z (cz) gate under finite Rydberg blockade, paying particular attention to the influence of near-degenerate Rydberg pair states and resonant dipole-dipole interactions. Using the global two-pulse excitation protocol, we model the full gate dynamics, explicitly capturing population leakage into noncomputational states. By analyzing the interplay between the control parameters such as Rabi frequency, detuning, the F\"orster defect, and interaction strength, we identify conditions that enable fast, high-fidelity gate operation while minimizing leakage. We also quantify the impact of finite Rydberg-state lifetimes on gate error and further demonstrate that the optimal parameter regimes identified here are accessible in current rubidium-based tweezer experiments. These results provide practical guidance for optimizing two-qubit gate protocols in neutral-atom quantum processors with experimentally accessible conditions.
We identify time-optimal laser pulses to implement the controlled-Z gate and its three qubit generalization, the C 2 Z gate, for Rydberg atoms in the blockade regime. Pulses are optimized using a combination of numerical and semi-analytical quantum optimal control techniques that result in smooth Ansätze with just a few variational parameters. For the CZ gate, the time-optimal implementation corresponds to a global laser pulse that does not require single site addressability of the atoms, simplifying experimental implementation of the gate. We employ quantum optimal control techniques to mitigate errors arising due to the finite lifetime of Rydberg states and finite blockade strengths, while several other types of errors affecting the gates are directly mitigated by the short gate duration. For the considered error sources, we achieve theoretical gate fidelities compatible with error correction using reasonable experimental parameters for CZ and C 2 Z gates.
Rydberg entangling gates driven by a two-photon transition in alkali atoms suffer from an adverse scaling of light-shift-induced errors. Robustness to such detuning errors is known to be impossible to achieve in the design of conventional Rydberg gate protocols, where only one of the qubit states is coupled to the Rydberg state. Here, we show that in a more general framework, in which both qubit states take part in the gate, full or partial robustness to these errors can be realized. We present two gate constructions, which either cancel the errors outright or convert them into single-qubit errors that can be corrected locally. We map the regimes -- in terms of light-shift strength, intensity inhomogeneity, and Rydberg decay rate -- in which these protocols outperform the widely used time-optimal Rydberg gate, and find that they already include the conditions of state-of-the-art experiments. Finally, we show the existence of a Rydberg `fly-by' entangling gate, an important primitive for an emerging class of neutral-atom quantum computing architectures.
Rydberg blockade gates are the most experimentally mature entangling operations in neutral-atom quantum processors, combining fast gate times with simple control, but their performance degrades at larger interatomic separations and remains sensitive to motional and technical noise. Non-blockade gate schemes, such as dark-state and geometric protocols, offer complementary robustness but typically rely on complex and experimentally demanding control. Here we show that quantum optimal control enables non-blockade gate schemes to be implemented using the experimentally established pulse-shaping techniques developed for blockade-based gates. Focusing on the dark-state gate, we construct non-adiabatic implementations that preserve the intrinsic robustness of adiabatic dark-state protocols while achieving gate times comparable to time-optimal blockade gates using only smooth, experimentally feasible pulses. The resulting gates exhibit enhanced resilience to motional coupling, laser noise, and interaction inhomogeneity, particularly near and beyond the blockade radius. This work establishes a practical route to fast, robust two-qubit gates without increased experimental complexity.
Error suppression to the experimental imperfections is a central challenge for useful quantum computing. Recent studies have shown the advantages of using single-modulated pulses based on optimal control, which can realize high-fidelity two-qubit gates in neutral-atom arrays. However, typical optimization minimizes only the ideal gate error in the absence of any decay, which allows the gate to be passively influenced by all error sources leading to an exponential increase of the insensitivity when error becomes larger. In the present work, we propose the realization of two-qubit CZ{C}_{Z}CZ​ gates with active robustness against two-photon detuning errors. Our method depends on a modified cost function in numerical optimization for shaping gate pulses, which minimizes, not only the ideal gate error but also the fluctuations of gate infidelity over a wide error range. We introduce a family of Rydberg blockade gates with active robustness towards the impacts of versatile noise sources such as Doppler dephasing and ac Stark shifts. The resulting gates with robust pulses can significantly increase the insensitivity to any type of errors acting on the two-photon detuning, benefiting from a relaxed requirement of colder atomic temperatures or more stable lasers for current experimental technology.