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arXiv:2602.13885

High-fidelity non-adiabatic dark state gates for neutral atoms

Nader Mostaan, Kapil Goswami, Peter Schmelcher, Rick Mukherjee

quant-phSubmitted Feb 14, 2026• Announced Feb 17, 2026• 0 citations
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Abstract

Rydberg blockade gates are the most experimentally mature entangling operations in neutral-atom quantum processors, combining fast gate times with simple control, but their performance degrades at larger interatomic separations and remains sensitive to motional and technical noise. Non-blockade gate schemes, such as dark-state and geometric protocols, offer complementary robustness but typically rely on complex and experimentally demanding control. Here we show that quantum optimal control enables non-blockade gate schemes to be implemented using the experimentally established pulse-shaping techniques developed for blockade-based gates. Focusing on the dark-state gate, we construct non-adiabatic implementations that preserve the intrinsic robustness of adiabatic dark-state protocols while achieving gate times comparable to time-optimal blockade gates using only smooth, experimentally feasible pulses. The resulting gates exhibit enhanced resilience to motional coupling, laser noise, and interaction inhomogeneity, particularly near and beyond the blockade radius. This work establishes a practical route to fast, robust two-qubit gates without increased experimental complexity.

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Rydberg blockade gates are the most experimentally mature entangling operations in neutral-atom quantum processors, combining fast gate times with simple control, but their performance degrades at larger interatomic separations and remains sensitive to motional and technical noise. Non-blockade gate schemes, such as dark-state and geometric protocols, offer complementary robustness but typically rely on complex and experimentally demanding control. Here we show that quantum optimal control enables non-blockade gate schemes to be implemented using the experimentally established pulse-shaping techniques developed for blockade-based gates. Focusing on the dark-state gate, we construct non-adiabatic implementations that preserve the intrinsic robustness of adiabatic dark-state protocols while achieving gate times comparable to time-optimal blockade gates using only smooth, experimentally feasible pulses. The resulting gates exhibit enhanced resilience to motional coupling, laser noise, and interaction inhomogeneity, particularly near and beyond the blockade radius. This work establishes a practical route to fast, robust two-qubit gates without increased experimental complexity.
We investigate the robustness of two-qubit gates to deviations of experimental controls on a neutral atom platform utilizing Rydberg states. We construct robust controlled-Z gates---employing techniques from quantum optimal control---that retain high Bell-state fidelity F>0.999F>0.999F>0.999 in the presence of significant deviations of the coupling strength to the Rydberg state. Such deviations can arise from laser intensity noise and atomic motion in an inhomogeneous coupling field. We also discuss methods to mitigate errors due to deviations of the laser detuning. The designed pulses operate on timescales that are short compared to the fundamental decay timescale set by spontaneous emission and blackbody radiation. We account for the finite lifetime of the Rydberg state in both the optimization and fidelity calculations---this makes the gates conducive to noisy intermediate-scale quantum experiments, meaning that our protocols can reduce infidelity on near-term quantum computing devices. We calculate physical properties associated with infidelity for strontium-88 atoms---including lifetimes, polarizabilities, and blockade strengths---and use these calculations to identify optimal Rydberg states for our protocols, which allows for further minimization of infidelity.
We present a theoretical scheme for a family of fast and high-fidelity two-qubit iSWAP gates between neutral atoms separated by more than 20 um, enabled by resonant dipole-dipole spin-exchange interactions between Rydberg states. The protocol harnesses coherent excitation-exchange-deexcitation dynamics between the qubit and the Rydberg states within a single and smooth laser pulse, in the presence of strong dipole-dipole interactions. We utilize optimal control methods to achieve theoretical gate fidelities and durations comparable to blockade-based gates in the presence of relevant noise, while extending the effective interaction range by an order of magnitude. This enables entanglement well beyond the blockade radius, offering a route toward fast, high-connectivity quantum processors.
Rydberg blockaded gate is a fundamental ingredient for scalable quantum computation with neutral Rydberg atoms. However the fidelity of such a gate is intrinsically limited by a blockade error coming from a Rydberg level shift that forbids its extensive use. Based on a dark-state adiabatic passage, we develop a novel protocol for realizing a two-atom blockade-error-free quantum gate in a hybrid system with simultaneous van der Waals (vdWsI) and resonant dipole-dipole interactions (DDI). The basic idea relies on converting the roles of two interactions, which is, the DDI serves as one time-dependent tunable pulse and the vdWsI acts as a negligible middle level shift, as long as the adiabatic condition is preserved. We adopt an optimized super-Gaussian optical pulse with kπ(k ≫ 1) area accompanied by a smooth tuning for the DDI, composing a circular stimulated Raman adiabatic passage, which can robustly ensure a faster operation time ∼ 80ns as well as a highly-efficient gate fidelity ∼ 0.9996. This theoretical protocol offers a flexible treatment for hybrid interactions in complex Rydberg systems, enabling on-demand design of new types of effective Rydberg quantum gate devices.
We show that the use of shaped pulses improves the fidelity of a Rydberg-blockade two-qubit entangling gate by several orders of magnitude compared to previous protocols based on square pulses or optimal control pulses. Using analytical derivative removal by adiabatic gate (DRAG) pulses that reduce excitation of primary leakage states and an analytical method of finding the optimal Rydberg blockade, we generate Bell states with a fidelity of F>0.9999F>0.9999F>0.9999 in a 300 K environment for a gate time of only 50ns50\phantom{\rule{0.28em}{0ex}}\mathrm{ns}50ns, which is an order of magnitude faster than previous protocols. These results establish the potential of neutral atom qubits with Rydberg-blockade gates for scalable quantum computation.
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^{133}133Cs, as a representative alkali atom, and 88^{88}88Sr, 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%99.9\%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.
One can implement fast two-qubit entangling gates by exploiting the Rydberg blockade. Although various theoretical schemes have been proposed, experimenters have not yet been able to demonstrate two-atom gates of high fidelity due to experimental constraints. We propose a novel scheme, which only uses a single Rydberg pulse illuminating both atoms, for the construction of neutral-atom controlled-phase gates. In contrast to the existing schemes, our approach is simpler to implement and requires neither individual addressing of atoms nor adiabatic procedures. With parameters estimated based on actual experimental scenarios, a gate fidelity higher than 0.99 is achievable.