The authors propose a laser tweezer configuration that can trap a Rydberg atom by exploiting the size and geometry of its wave function. The trap, which can naturally trap ground-state atoms too, can be tuned to put the Rydberg state in a highly quantum hula-hoop-like motion.
Individually trapped neutral atoms are a promising candidate for use in quantum computing and simulation applications. They are highly scalable, have long coherence times and can be entangled via strong dipole-dipole interactions by driving to highly excited Rydberg states. However, the fidelity of single atom operations as well as two-atom entangling operations is limited by intrinsic sources of decoherence such as atomic motion, as well as technical sources of noise such as laser intensity fluctuations and phase/frequency fluctuations. We study the effect of these factors on single atom Rabi oscillations and two-atom Rydberg blockaded Rabi oscillations, using perturbation theory and numerical simulation. We develop a window function approach which helps us qualitatively understand the significance of the different spectral components of the noise as well as quantitatively understand the dependence of the Rabi oscillation fidelity on Rabi frequency. This allows us to predict the maximum experimentally achievable fidelities using independent measurements of experimental parameters such as noise spectra and atomic temperature. Turning to the question of near-term scalability of the experimental system, we prototype and test a method of generating a ’ladder’ configuration of optical tweezers utilizing two independent lasers. Our setup allows us to fully tune the geometry of the ladder, namely the separation between the two rows, the angle between them, and their relative position along the axis of the ladder. This pseudo-2D configuration enables us to reach larger system sizes in the near future and allows us to access beyond 1D physics.
Neutral Rydberg atoms trapped in optical tweezer arrays provide a platform for quantum simulation and computation. In this work, we investigate the Lamb-Dicke dynamics of coupled Rydberg atoms for different trapping frequencies. We model the atomic motion by both internal and motional degrees of freedom, in which the motional states arise due to the oscillation of each atom in optical tweezer traps due to the light-atom interaction. In this setup, the internal states are coupled to a laser light with a Rabi frequency, while each internal state of each atom is also harmonically trapped with a trap frequency that depends on the internal state. The impact of the coherent motion of the optical tweezers on the collective dynamics of the many-body Rydberg atoms is explored for varying Lamb-Dicke parameters and with different trap frequencies. We see the occurrence of dynamical phases e.g., Rabi oscillations in the decoupled limit, the limit torus phase for magic trapping, and the limit cycle phase as the trap frequency is further increased.
Single neutral atoms trapped in optical tweezers and laser-coupled to Rydberg states provide a fast and flexible platform to generate configurable atomic arrays for quantum simulation. The platform is especially suited to study quantum spin systems in various geometries. However, for experiments requiring continuous trapping, inhomogeneous light shifts induced by the trapping potential and temperature broadening impose severe limitations. Here we show how Raman sideband cooling allows one to overcome those limitations, thus, preparing the stage for Rydberg dressing in tweezer arrays.