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arXiv:2507.10671

Data-insenstive cooling of polar molecules with Rydberg atoms

Jeremy T. Young, Ron Belyansky, Kang-Kuen Ni, Alexey Vyacheslavovich Gorshkov

Published Jul 14, 2025• 0 citations
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Abstract

We propose a method to sympathetically cool polar molecules with Rydberg atoms without destroying the quantum information encoded in the polar molecules. While the interactions between the two are usually state-dependent, we show how to engineer state-insensitive interactions between the hot molecules and the cold atoms with a suitable choice of internal states and the application of external fields. The resulting interactions, which may be van der Waals or dipolar, induce a phonon swap interaction between the two species, thereby coherently cooling the polar molecules without affecting the internal state, a process which can be repeated if the atoms are cooled again or new cold atoms are brought in. Our cooling schemes open the possibility of extending quantum computation and simulation times in emerging hybrid tweezer arrays of polar molecules and neutral atoms.

DOI
10.48550/arxiv.2507.10671

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We propose a method to sympathetically cool polar molecules with Rydberg atoms without destroying the quantum information encoded in the polar molecules. While the interactions between the two are usually state-dependent, we show how to engineer state-insensitive interactions between the hot molecules and the cold atoms with a suitable choice of internal states and the application of external fields. The resulting interactions, which may be van der Waals or dipolar, induce a phonon swap interaction between the two species, thereby coherently cooling the polar molecules without affecting the internal state, a process which can be repeated if the atoms are cooled again or new cold atoms are brought in. Our cooling schemes open the possibility of extending quantum computation and simulation times in emerging hybrid tweezer arrays of polar molecules and neutral atoms.
We propose a protocol for sympathetically cooling neutral atoms without destroying the quantum information stored in their internal states. This is achieved by designing state-insensitive Rydberg interactions between the data-carrying atoms and cold auxiliary atoms. The resulting interactions give rise to an effective phonon coupling, which leads to the transfer of heat from the data atoms to the auxiliary atoms, where the latter can be cooled by conventional methods. This can be used to extend the lifetime of quantum storage based on neutral atoms and can have applications for long quantum computations. The protocol can also be modified to realize state-insensitive interactions between the data and the auxiliary atoms but tunable and nontrivial interactions among the data atoms, allowing one to simultaneously cool and simulate a quantum spin model.
Arrays of trapped neutral atoms and polar molecules have separately emerged as powerful and complementary platforms for quantum science. Neutral atoms enable fast, programmable interactions through excitation to Rydberg states, whereas polar molecules possess long-lived rotational states that are attractive for quantum memories and qudits. Combining these platforms would create new possibilities, but requires a coherent interface between individual atoms and molecules, which so far has not been realised. Here, we establish such an interface between a single neutral atom and a single polar molecule. By tuning atomic and molecular transitions into resonance, we realise strong state-dependent dipolar interactions at micrometre separations in an optical tweezer platform with single-particle control. We exploit this interface to perform quantum operations between the two particles, demonstrating atom-mediated readout of a molecular qubit, coherent spin exchange, and entanglement using a blockade-based controlled-NOT operation. These results establish a new hybrid quantum platform at the intersection of atomic and molecular physics, in which long-lived molecular quantum information can be rapidly mapped onto an atom for readout or onward coherent transfer. The platform provides a route to hybrid quantum processors utilising atom-mediated readout and entanglement of molecular qubits, mixed-species quantum simulators of dipolar systems, and macroscopic entangled molecular states for quantum-enhanced metrology and precision sensing.
We study the possibility to use interaction between a polar molecule in the ground electronic and vibrational state and a Rydberg atom to construct two-qubit gates between molecular qubits and to coherently control molecular states. A polar molecule within the electron orbit in a Rydberg atom can either shift the Rydberg state, or form a Rydberg molecule. Both the atomic shift and the Rydberg molecule states depend on the initial internal state of the polar molecule, resulting in molecular state dependent van der Waals or dipole-dipole interaction between Rydberg atoms. Rydberg atoms mediated interaction between polar molecules can be enhanced up to 10(3) times. We describe how the coupling between a polar molecule and a Rydberg atom can be applied to coherently control molecular states, and specifically, to individually address molecules in an optical lattice, and to non-destructively readout molecular qubits.
The ability to control particles in the quantum regime at the individual particle level is a challenge at the frontier of quantum science and engineering. Of the many quantum objects developed in pursuit of this goal, ultracold molecules host rich internal states and unique inter-particle interactions that could lend themselves useful to a broad range of applications including quantum computing and simulation, precision measurements and quantum chemistry. In this thesis we present a bottom-up approach to creating single molecules in individual optical tweezers. In particular, single atoms of two different species are first trapped and cooled in individual optical tweezers then brought together to form a single molecule coherently. Using this approach, we have successfully created an array of fully quantum-state-controlled polar molecules. The quantum state – including both internal and external states – of the resulting molecules are known to us, and is the first time single neutral molecules have been under full quantum state control. This platform offers exciting new opportunities to harness the rich properties of molecules in many quantum science applications.
We describe the ro-vibrational van der Waals interaction between ultracold polar molecules. This interaction is strong, leading to fast elastic collisions and orders of magnitude suppression of collisional loss. This enables evaporative cooling of Fermi mixtures of molecules in different ro-vibrational states, without active shielding by applying external fields. The scheme is compatible with microwave shielding, where it enables controlled state dependent interactions, opening up new opportunities for quantum simulation and impurity physics. The interaction can also be used to stabilize fermionic molecules in optical lattices, to control interactions in synthetic dimensions, for enhanced tweezer loading, and direct infrared shielding.
Tweezer arrays of polar molecules present new opportunities for quantum science and quantum information. However, a major challenge, especially in bialkali molecule platforms, is the fact that current measurement schemes for the internal states are destructive. In this work, we present a method to use Rydberg atoms to nondestructively measure the internal state of a molecular qubit. We achieve this via microwave dressing of both molecules and Rydberg atoms, allowing us to tune the interactions so that there are minimal Rydberg-Rydberg interactions and many measurements can take place simultaneously. We consider two experimentally-motivated examples of detecting 23^{23}23Na133^{133}133Cs and 87^{87}87Rb133^{133}133Cs with 133^{133}133Cs atoms. Finally, we discuss several strategies for mitigating various sources of crosstalk.