Ensembles of atoms interacting via their Rydberg levels, known as "superatoms" for their ability to encode qubits and to emit single photons, attract increasing attention as building blocks for quantum network nodes. Assessing their performance requires an accurate, physically informative and numerically scalable description of interactions in a large and disordered ensemble. We derive such a description from first principles and successfully test it against brute-force numerics and experimental data. This model proves essential to make quantitative predictions about gate fidelities or photon emission efficiencies, and to guide experiments towards large-scale superatom-based systems.
Ensembles of atoms interacting via their Rydberg levels, known as "superatoms" for their ability to encode qubits and to emit single photons, attract increasing attention as building blocks for quantum network nodes. Assessing their performance requires an accurate, physically informative and numerically scalable description of interactions in a large and disordered ensemble. We derive such a description from first principles and successfully test it against brute-force numerics and experimental data. This model proves essential to make quantitative predictions about gate fidelities or photon emission efficiencies, and to guide experiments towards large-scale superatom-based systems.
Owing to the long lifetime of Rydberg atom, easy to operate and easy to control the interaction between Rydberg atoms, Rydberg atom has attracted considerable attention in quantum information and quantum optics fields. Specially, the anti-blockade effect, as a physical resource, can be used to implement various tasks in quantum information processing. Based on the rigid dipole blockade, an ensemble of two-level Rydberg atoms trapped in three magneto-optical traps can be regarded as a superatom. Based on the superatom model, the in-phase and anti-phase dynamics of the three-body Rydberg superatoms are studied by adjusting the numbers of atoms, and the W state and two kinds of maximal entangled states are generated simultaneously. Our work has great potential applications in coherent manipulation and quantum information processing.The numerical simulations are performed based on the superatom model and thereby the formidable obstacle that the Hilbert space dimension grows exponentially with the particle number increasing can be completely removed. As a result, the quantum control and quantum entanglement can be achieved from the single-quanta level to the mesoscopic level.
Owing to the unique physical characteristics of Rydberg atoms, which play an important role in quantum information and quantum computation, the theoretical and applied research of Rydberg atoms have become the hot spots of scientific research in recent years. With the large polarizability of Rydberg atoms, even a small electric field could cause a considerable electric dipole moment, resulting in a strong dipole-dipole interaction between Rydberg atoms. The multiple excitations of the Rydberg states are strongly inhibited because of the strong dipole interaction between atoms within a mesoscopic interaction (blockade) region. We call this phenomenon the dipole blockade effect. The dipole blockade effect makes it possible to build single-photon quantum devices, implement quantum gates, generate quantum entanglement, and simulate many-body quantum problems, etc. A Rydberg atomic ensemble in the same blockade region can be regarded as a superatom. In the same way, if these atoms trapped in two optical dipole traps, each sub-ensemble can be considered as a sub-superatom which is closely related to the superatom. According to the fact that two Rydberg sub-superatoms can be strongly correlated due to sharing no more than one excited Rydberg atom, we study correlated collective excitation and quantum entanglement between two Rydberg sub-superatoms in a steady state. With the superatom model, the problem of exponentially increasing system size with the number of atoms can be circumvented to a certain extent in studying many-body physics. By solving the two-body Lindblad’s master equation accurately, we obtain the analytical expressions for the collective excitation probabilities of the two sub-superatoms, and the concurrence measuring the bipartite entanglement between them. Our results show that they are all sensitive to the number of atoms in each Rydberg superatom: the bigger (including more atoms) the Rydberg superatom, the higher the collective Rydberg excitation probability is. And that the maximally entangled state can only be obtained with two equal-sized Rydberg superatoms. When this condition is fulfilled, the mesoscopic entanglement can be generated by adding the number of atoms in each Rydberg superatom. This may provide an attractive platform for studying the quantum-classical correspondence and have potential promising applications in quantum information processing.
Abstract We have numerically simulated quantum tomography of single-qubit and two-qubit quantum gates with qubits represented by mesoscopic ensembles containing random numbers of atoms. Such ensembles of strongly interacting atoms in the regime of Rydberg blockade are known as Rydberg superatoms. The stimulated Raman adiabatic passage (STIRAP) in the regime of Rydberg blockade is used for determining Rydberg excitation in the ensemble, required for the storage of quantum information in the collective state of the atomic ensemble and implementation of two-qubit gates. The optimized shapes of the STIRAP pulses are used to achieve high fidelity of the population transfer. Our simulations confirm the validity and high fidelity of single-qubit and two-qubit gates with Rydberg superatoms.
The W state, as a robust multipartite entangled state, plays an important role in quantum information processing, quantum network construction and quantum computing. In this paper, a three-level ladder-type Rydberg atomic system is placed into a Rydberg blocking sphere to form a superatom. Each superatom has many collective states including just one Rydberg excitation constrained by the Rydberg blockade effect. In the weak cavity field limit, at most one atom can be pumped into excited state, then we can describe the superatom by using a three-level ladder-type system. Afterwards we encode quantum information about the effective energy levels of Rydberg superatoms and propose a fast scheme for preparing the Rydberg superatom W state based on the superadiabatic iterative technique and quantum Zeno dynamics.This scheme can be achieved in only one step by controlling the laser pulses. In this scheme, the superatoms are trapped in spatially separated cavities connected by optical fibers, thereby greatly improving the feasibility of experimental manipulation. A remarkable feature is that it does not need to accurately control experimental parameters and interaction time. Meanwhile, the form of counterdiabatic Hamiltonian is the same as that of the effective Hamiltonian. Through numerical simulations, the fidelity of this scheme can reach 99.94%. Even considering decoherence effects, including atomic spontaneous emission and photon leakage, the fidelity can still exceed 97.5%, thereby further demonstrating the strong robustness of the solution. In addition, the Rabi frequency can be characterized as a linear superposition of Gaussian functions, and this representation significantly alleviates the complexity encountered in practical experiments. Futhermore, we also analyze the influence of parameter fluctuations on the fidelity, and the results show that this scheme is robust against parameter fluctuations. Finally, the present scheme is extended to the case of N Rydberg superatoms, which shows the scalability of our scheme.
With Rydberg dipole interactions, a mesoscopic atomic ensemble may behave like a two-level single atom, resulting in the so-called picture of superatom. It is in potential a strong candidate as a qubit in quantum information science, especially for efficient coupling with single photons via collective enhancement that is essential for building quantum internet to connect remote quantum computers. Previously, preliminary studies have been carried out in demonstrating basic concept of Rydberg superatom, a single-photon source, and entanglement with a single photon, etc. While a crucial element of single-shot qubit measurement is still missing. Here we realize the deterministic measurement of a superatom qubit via photon burst in a single shot. We make use of a low-finesse ring cavity to enhance the atom-photon interaction and obtain an in-fiber retrieval efficiency of 44%. Harnessing dipole interaction between two Rydberg levels, we may either create a sequence of multiple single photons or nothing, conditioned on the initial qubit state. We achieve a single-shot measurement fidelity of 93.2% in 4.8 us. Our work complements the experimental toolbox of harnessing Rydberg superatom for quantum information applications.
Abstract Quantum optics based on highly excited atoms, also known as Rydberg atoms, has cemented itself as a powerful platform for the manipulation of light at the few-photon level. The Rydberg blockade, resulting from the strong interaction between individual Rydberg atoms, can turn a large ensemble of atoms into a system which collectively resembles a single two-level emitter, a so-called Rydberg superatom. The coupling of this artificial emitter to a driving photonic mode is collectively enhanced by Rydberg interactions, enabling strong coherent coupling at the few-photon level in free-space. The exquisite level of control achievable through this has already demonstrated its utility in applications of quantum computing and information processing. Here, we review the derivation of the collective coupling between a Rydberg superatom and a single light mode and discuss the similarity of this free-space setup to waveguide quantum electrodynamics systems of quantum emitters coupled to photonic waveguides. We also briefly review applications of Rydberg superatoms to quantum optics such as single-photon generation and single-photon subtraction.