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arXiv:2502.21238 · Physical Review A

iSWAP gate with polar molecules: Robustness criteria for entangling operations

Matteo Bergonzoni, Sven Jandura, Guido Pupillo

Published Sep 5, 2025• 6 citations

Abstract

Ultracold polar molecules in optical lattices or tweezer arrays offer a promising platform for quantum information processing and simulation, thanks to their rich internal structure and long-range dipolar interactions. Recent experimental advances now allow precise control over individual molecules, enabling two-qubit gates based on the iSWAP gate. A key challenge is however the sensitivity to variations of the dipole-dipole interaction strength - stemming from motion of the molecules and uncertainty on the precise positioning of external confining potentials - that limits current gate fidelities. To address this, we develop a quantum optimal control framework, based on a perturbative approach, to design gates that are robust with respect to quasi-static deviations of Hamiltonian parameters, and provide criteria to evaluate a priori whether a gate can be made robust for a given control Hamiltonian. By applying these criteria to exchange-coupled qubits, as polar molecules, we demonstrate that robustness cannot be achieved with global controls only, but can be attained by breaking the exchange symmetry through local controls, such as a local detuning. We determine the robust time-optimal solution for realizing an iSWAP gate, show that the control pulses can be designed to be smooth functions, and achieve theoretical gate fidelities compatible with error correction under realistic parameters. Additionally, we show that certain entangled state preparations, such as Bell states, can be made robust even with global controls only. We demonstrate that, under the adiabatic approximation - where molecular motion occurs on timescales faster than that of the exchange interaction - the noise arising from thermal motion can be effectively treated as quasi-static variations of Hamiltonian parameters. This allows us to extend our treatment to the concrete experimental case of polar molecules.

DOI: 10.1103/q9sd-rfp6

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Ultracold polar molecules in optical lattices or tweezer arrays offer a promising platform for quantum information processing and simulation, thanks to their rich internal structure and long-range dipolar interactions. Recent experimental advances now allow precise control over individual molecules, enabling two-qubit gates based on the iSWAP gate. A key challenge is however the sensitivity to variations of the dipole-dipole interaction strength - stemming from motion of the molecules and uncertainty on the precise positioning of external confining potentials - that limits current gate fidelities. To address this, we develop a quantum optimal control framework, based on a perturbative approach, to design gates that are robust with respect to quasi-static deviations of Hamiltonian parameters, and provide criteria to evaluate a priori whether a gate can be made robust for a given control Hamiltonian. By applying these criteria to exchange-coupled qubits, as polar molecules, we demonstrate that robustness cannot be achieved with global controls only, but can be attained by breaking the exchange symmetry through local controls, such as a local detuning. We determine the robust time-optimal solution for realizing an iSWAP gate, show that the control pulses can be designed to be smooth functions, and achieve theoretical gate fidelities compatible with error correction under realistic parameters. Additionally, we show that certain entangled state preparations, such as Bell states, can be made robust even with global controls only. We demonstrate that, under the adiabatic approximation - where molecular motion occurs on timescales faster than that of the exchange interaction - the noise arising from thermal motion can be effectively treated as quasi-static variations of Hamiltonian parameters. This allows us to extend our treatment to the concrete experimental case of polar molecules.

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Optically trapped ultracold polar molecules can have multiple long-lived states for coding quantum information, and can exhibit electric dipole-dipole interactions~(DDI) which enables entanglement generation. The general understanding on the quantized motion~(QM) of molecules in the traps is that it causes fluctuation of DDI. Here, we find that the molecular QM can realize an asymmetric quantum Rabi model, which is of specific importance in the study of fundamental physics. The molecular QM can also lead to an exotic trap-dipole resonance, resulting in excess population loss to uncoupled motional states, and, hence, should be avoided in a general quantum control over polar molecules. To examine the impact of QM on quantum computing based on polar molecules, we introduce two gate protocols, a fast iSWAP gate which can be realized by a global microwave pulse of pulse area smaller than

2π

, and a controlled-phase gate with an arbitrary controlled phase, and find that both gates can attain a high fidelity.

Polar molecules, with their rich internal structure, offer immense potential for fundamental physics, quantum technology, and controlled chemistry. However, their utilization is currently limited because of slow and imperfect state detection and weak dipolar interaction, limiting fast and large-scale entanglement generation. We propose and analyze a scheme for quantum logic control and measurement-based state preparation in a hybrid platform of polar molecules and neutral atoms. The method leverages fast, high-fidelity atom-molecule gates and high-fidelity atomic ancilla measurements to overcome the common challenges in molecule-only platforms, while preserving their diverse structural advantages. The proposed atom-molecule controlled-phase gate is based on resonant dipole-dipole exchange between a molecular rotational transition and an atomic Rydberg transition, rendering it three orders of magnitude faster than any direct molecule-molecule entangling gate. We further study several applications of our scheme including the preparation of molecular GHZ states for quantum enhanced precision measurements, the preparation of exotic molecular qudit states with topological order, and measurement-altered criticality. Our scheme is applicable to any polar molecule. It expands the paradigm of quantum logic control and paves the way to large-scale molecular entangled states. More generally, it highlights a concrete hybrid quantum system in which each qubit is utilized in an optimal way and where the measurement-based approach can yield a significant advantage in near-term devices.

We present a native realization of iSWAP and parametrized \textit{exchange} gates for neutral-atom quantum processing units. Our approach leverages strong dipole-dipole interactions between two different dipole-coupled Rydberg states, employing optimal control techniques to design high-fidelity, time-efficient gate pulses. To minimize experimental complexity, we utilize global driving fields acting identically on all atoms and apply pulse smoothing techniques. While detrimental van der Waals interactions pose a significant challenge, we demonstrate that for both

^{133}

Cs, as a representative alkali atom, and

^{88}

Sr, an alkaline-earth species, high-fidelity pulses can nevertheless be obtained over a broad range of parameters. We identify candidate protocols with reduced susceptibility to noise and analyze their performance under realistic conditions, accounting for atomic motion, Rydberg decay, and experimentally motivated laser frequency and intensity noise. Crucially, we demonstrate that in both Alkali and alkaline-earth-based systems, we can obtain fast iSWAP gates with fidelities of

99.9\%

under realistic experimental conditions. These results pave the way for expanding the neutral-atom gate set beyond conventional Rydberg-blockade-based entangling gates.

Optically trapped polar molecules are promising for quantum information processing, yet the accuracy of an entangling molecular gate is limited by the uncertainty of dipole-dipole interactions~(DDI) from the molecular motion in traps. We show that two

π

pulses of global microwave excitation can yield a high-fidelity controlled-phase gate when assisted by two single-qubit gates. The gate is resilient to the uncertainty of DDI because it does not rely on populating DDI-coupled states. Further, the controlled phase is fully tunable by varying the relative phase of the two global microwave pulses, and, hence, the gate can find applications in a wide range of quantum algorithms involving quantum Fourier transform. Moreover, we introduce a motional-mode separation technique to quantum mechanically study the influence of the molecular motion, which shows that the gate fidelity can be over 0.9999 with typical experimental conditions.

Polar molecules are an emerging platform for quantum technologies based on their long-range electric dipole--dipole interactions, which open new possibilities for quantum information processing and the quantum simulation of strongly correlated systems. Here, we use magnetic and microwave fields to design a fast entangling gate with

>0.999

fidelity and which is robust with respect to fluctuations in the trapping and control fields and to small thermal excitations. These results establish the feasibility to build a scalable quantum processor with a broad range of molecular species in optical-lattice and optical-tweezers setups.