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arXiv:2412.09780 · PRX Quantum

High Optical Access Cryogenic System for Rydberg Atom Arrays with a 3000-Second Trap Lifetime

Zhenpu Zhang, Ting‐Wei Hsu, Ting You Tan, D. H. Slichter, Adam M. Kaufman, Matteo Marinelli, Cindy A. Regal

Published May 27, 2025• 13 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

We present an optical tweezer array of 87 Rb atoms housed in an cryogenic environment that successfully combines a 4-K cryopumping surface, a <50-K cold box surrounding the atoms, and a room-temperature high-numerical-aperture objective lens. We demonstrate a 3000-s atom-trap lifetime, which enables us to optimize and measure losses at the 10 − 4 level that arise during imaging and cooling, which are important to array rearrangement. We perform both ground-state qubit manipulation with an integrated microwave antenna and two-photon coherent Rydberg control, with the local electric field tuned to zero via integrated electrodes. We anticipate that the reduced blackbody radiation at the atoms from the cryogenic environment, combined with future electrical shielding, should decrease the rate of undesired transitions to nearby strongly interacting Rydberg states, which cause many-body loss and impede Rydberg gates. This low-vibration, high-optical-access cryogenic platform can be used with a wide range of optically trapped atomic or molecular species for applications in quantum computing, simulation, and metrology.

DOI
10.1103/prxquantum.6.020337

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We present an optical tweezer array of 87 Rb atoms housed in an cryogenic environment that successfully combines a 4-K cryopumping surface, a <50-K cold box surrounding the atoms, and a room-temperature high-numerical-aperture objective lens. We demonstrate a 3000-s atom-trap lifetime, which enables us to optimize and measure losses at the 10 − 4 level that arise during imaging and cooling, which are important to array rearrangement. We perform both ground-state qubit manipulation with an integrated microwave antenna and two-photon coherent Rydberg control, with the local electric field tuned to zero via integrated electrodes. We anticipate that the reduced blackbody radiation at the atoms from the cryogenic environment, combined with future electrical shielding, should decrease the rate of undesired transitions to nearby strongly interacting Rydberg states, which cause many-body loss and impede Rydberg gates. This low-vibration, high-optical-access cryogenic platform can be used with a wide range of optically trapped atomic or molecular species for applications in quantum computing, simulation, and metrology.
We report on the realization of a 133^{133}133Cs optical tweezer array in a cryogenic blackbody radiation (BBR) environment. By enclosing the array within a 4K radiation shield, we measure long Rydberg lifetimes, up to 406(36) μ406 (36)\,μ406(36)μs for the 55P3/255 P_{3/2}55P3/2​ Rydberg state, a factor of 3.3(3) longer than the room-temperature value. We employ single-photon coupling for coherent manipulation of the ground-Rydberg qubit. We measure a small differential dynamic polarizability of the transition, beneficial for reducing dephasing due to light intensity fluctuations. Our results pave the path for advancing neutral-atom two-qubit gate fidelities as their error budgets become increasingly dominated by T1T_1T1​ relaxation of the ground-Rydberg qubit.
We report on a cryogenic platform at 4 K incorporating high numerical aperture optics for the generation of large-scale tweezers arrays, and compatible with Rydberg-state manipulation. We achieve trapping lifetimes of around 5000 s, significantly extending the available experimental time for the preparation of large-scale arrays. By combining two trapping lasers at different wavelengths and by minimizing other atom losses during the rearrangement and imaging processes, we demonstrate the preparation of defect-free arrays with up to 1024 atoms. Our cryogenic design opens exciting prospects for analog and digital quantum computing.
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.
This thesis develops and exploits a room-temperature platform for quantum simulation with optically trapped circular Rydberg states of rubidium. The core of the work is a single-element hybrid architecture in which circular states encode the data degree of freedom, while optically accessible low-l Rydberg ancillae enable local addressing, conditional operations, and readout. These capabilities rely on operation near a Förster resonance. A first part of the thesis addresses a major scalability bottleneck of wide-field tweezer arrays: optical aberrations that degrade trap quality away from the optical axis. We present an atom-based method to calibrate a field-dependent wavefront-distortion model. This model is a central component of an array-generation algorithm developed previously within the team, enabling site-wise aberration correction at the programmed tweezer positions. Using the commercial aspheric lens integrated in our experimental setup, we obtain homogeneous, near-diffraction-limited traps over a 150 × 342 µm² field of view, ultimately limited by optical clipping. Building on these tools, we realize hybrid arrays combining bottle-beam traps for circular atoms and Gaussian tweezers for ancilla atoms. We then observe coherent resonant dipole-dipole spin-exchange (flip-flop) dynamics between two circular atoms prepared in |53C;54C⟩. The ancilla layer intervenes at three stages: it enables conditional preparation of the circular-atom pair state, contributes to a post-selection signal that identifies successful runs, and enables readout of the circular data-atom state. Because the ancilla is optically accessible, it provides local control and measurement of otherwise optically dark circular states. These results constitute a proof-of-principle for ancilla-enabled quantum simulation with circular Rydberg atoms in a hybrid platform. They motivate near-term upgrades that directly target the identified limitations, in particular cryogenic operation to access the long intrinsic lifetime of circular states, and efficient motional cooling to prepare atoms close to the motional ground state. By extending coherence times and reducing motion-induced damping, these upgrades would expand the accessible parameter regime and could enable the observation of hundreds of exchange oscillations with near-unit contrast. Combined with the site-resolved local control and non-destructive readout enabled by the ancilla layer, these upgrades would enable larger programmable arrays to probe slow many-body dynamics. With further improvements, for instance in fast and high-fidelity imaging, they would also pave the way for ancilla-assisted mid-circuit measurements.
We report on the trapping of single rubidium atoms in large arrays of optical tweezers comprising up to 2088 sites in a cryogenic environment at 6 K. Our approach relies on the use of microscope objectives that are in-vacuum but at room temperature, in combination with windowless thermal shields into which the objectives are protruding to ensure a cryogenic environment for the trapped atoms. To achieve enough optical power for efficient trapping, we combine two lasers at slightly different wavelengths. We discuss the performance and limitations of our design. Finally, we demonstrate atom-by-atom rearrangement of an 828-atom target array using moving optical tweezers controlled by a field-programmable gate array.
Integrating Rydberg-state control of atom-atom interactions with cavity control of atom-light interactions enables the combination of local entangling operations with photon-mediated long-range coupling, measurement, and communication. Such integration is challenging because electric fields generated by charges on cavity optics and by cavity-stabilizing actuators may disturb Rydberg-state coherence. Here, we couple a Rydberg tweezer array to a high-cooperativity optical cavity, suppressing the electric fields produced by cavity length actuation so that the residual field variation of about 3 mV/cm3~\mathrm{mV/cm}3 mV/cm rms does not limit Rydberg coherence. We demonstrate two capabilities that neither system provides alone. First, we use Purcell-enhanced fluorescence to read out atoms directly in the ground-Rydberg basis within 7.5 μs7.5~μ\mathrm{s}7.5 μs, well within the Rydberg-state lifetime, with ground- and Rydberg-state detection infidelities of 3%3\%3% and 5%5\%5%, respectively, and with low atom loss. Second, we use Rydberg-Rydberg interactions to control collective light-atom scattering into the cavity mode. Specifically, we drive blockaded Rabi oscillations between a state with two ground-state atoms, which scatter collectively with a superradiant or subradiant rate controlled by the atomic positions, and an entangled state with a single Rydberg excitation, which scatters like a single atom. These capabilities open routes toward networked Rydberg processors, mid-circuit measurements in analog quantum simulators, and many-body quantum optics with entangled emitters coupled collectively to light.