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Physics Today

Quantum computing with neutral atoms

David S. Weiss, Mark E. Saffman

Published Jul 1, 2017• 160 citations
Publisher

Abstract

With their hyperfine states serving as two-level qubits, atoms can be packed into closely spaced, laser-cooled arrays and be individually addressed using laser pulses.
DOI
10.1063/pt.3.3626

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Neutral atom quantum computing is a promising avenue toward the realization of a physical quantum computer. The diffraction pattern formed by laser light immediately behind a circular aperture can be used as optical atomic dipole traps, and has the potential to be scaled up to create a two dimensional array of individually addressable qubit sites. In working towards experimental demonstration of the dipole traps, we are constructing a MOT. The function of the MOT is to cool and trap 87Rb in a localized cloud in our vacuum chamber, which will be used to load the dipole traps. One critical aspect to the functioning of the MOT is the precise tuning of the trapping laser to the red of the F=2→F’=3 hyperfine transition and the pump laser to the F=1→F’=2 hyperfine transition. We have successfully constructed a saturated absorption apparatus which works to distinguish the hyperfine structure of Rb within the Doppler broadened transition peaks. The saturated absorption scans serve to correlate the voltage applied to the piezo with the laser light frequencies causing hyperfine transitions in Rb, allowing for the precise tuning of the lasers needed to trap atoms.
The neutral-atom quantum computing community has successfully implemented almost all necessary steps for constructing a neutral-atom quantum computer. We present computational results of a study aimed at solving the remaining problem of creating a quantum memory with individually addressable sites for quantum computing. The basis of this quantum memory is the diffraction pattern formed by laser light incident on a circular aperture. Very close to the aperture, the diffraction pattern has localized bright and dark spots that can serve as red-detuned or blue-detuned atomic dipole traps. These traps are suitable for quantum computing even for moderate laser powers. In particular, for moderate laser intensities ( 100~100 100 W/cm2{\mathrm{cm}}^{2}cm2) and comparatively small detunings ( 1000~1000 1000--10 000 linewidths), trap depths of  1~1 1 mK and trap frequencies of several to tens of kilohertz are achieved. Our results indicate that these dipole traps can be moved by tilting the incident laser beams without significantly changing the trap properties. We also explored the polarization dependence of these dipole traps. We developed a code that calculates the trapping potential energy for any magnetic substate of any hyperfine ground state of any alkali-metal atom for any laser detuning much smaller than the fine-structure splitting for any given electric field distribution. We describe details of our calculations and include a summary of different notations and conventions for the reduced matrix element and how to convert it to SI units. We applied this code to these traps and found a method for bringing two traps together and apart controllably without expelling the atoms from the trap and without significant tunneling probability between the traps. This approach can be scaled up to a two-dimensional array of many pinholes, forming a quantum memory with single-site addressability, in which pairs of atoms can be brought together and apart for two-qubit gates for quantum computing.
Abstract Multi-qubit quantum gates are the most important building blocks for quantum computation. In this article, we propose a scheme for realizing the Toffoli gate in a linear neutral atom array. Two ground-state hyperfine levels of the atoms are considered as qubit states. Our method relies on the strong and long-range interactions between atoms due to Rydberg excitations and the occurrence of dark states in the target qubit, with both control and target qubits being individually addressed with laser pulses. Our gate protocol enables precise control over the quantum states of individual qubits, effectively suppressing undesirable transitions to ensure high-fidelity gate performance. We also implement two-atom Rydberg antiblockade mechanism to avoid any unwanted population blockage in the control atoms to get the best fidelity. At zero temperature, the gate fidelity is estimated to be about 99.16% for realistic laser power omitting the motional state of the atoms when the interatomic distance ( l ) 6.55 μ m. We construct a C n NOT gate with n > 2 in a 2D atomic array by exploiting the n -atom Rydberg antiblockade (RAB) mechanism, which allows n atoms within the blockade radius to be simultaneously excited to the Rydberg states. In particular, we simulate C 3 NOT gate with about 98.37 % fidelity. We further analyze the gate error by decreasing the interatomic distance and find that gate fidelity improves more rapidly for larger n with increased interaction potential. We find that more than 99 % fidelity can be achieved for C 3 NOT gate for l < 6.2 μ m, implying that our proposed scheme promising and reliable for multi-qubit controlled NOT gates. For a finite temperature ( ∼ 30 μ K), including the Doppler dephasing, we simulate our gates to achieve 98.90% and 98.54 % fidelity for the Toffoli gate and C 3