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Optical Tweezer Arrays with Ytterbium Atoms for Studying Quantum Phenomena

Published Jan 1, 2022• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

A neutral Rydberg atom tweezer array is a promising platform for quantum computation. In this study, featuring its metastable excited state, an array of single ytterbium atoms trapped in micro-optical tweezers was constructed. This overcomes many problems in conventional systems using alkali atoms.
DOI
10.7566/jpsht.2.031

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Engineering controllable, strongly interacting many-body quantum systems is at the frontier of quantum simulation and quantum information processing. Arrays of laser-cooled neutral atoms in optical tweezers have emerged as a promising platform because of their flexibility and the potential for strong interactions via Rydberg states. Existing neutral atom array experiments utilize alkali atoms, but alkaline-earth atoms offer many advantages in terms of coherence and control, and also open the door to new applications in precision measurement and time keeping. In this Letter, we present a technique to trap individual alkaline-earth-like ytterbium (Yb) atoms in optical tweezer arrays. The narrow ^{1}S_{0}-^{3}P_{1} intercombination line is used for both cooling and imaging in a magic-wavelength optical tweezer at 532 nm. The low Doppler temperature allows for imaging near the saturation intensity, resulting in a very high atom detection fidelity. We demonstrate the imaging fidelity concretely by observing rare (<1 in 10^{4} images) spontaneous quantum jumps into and out of a metastable state. We also demonstrate stochastic loading of atoms into a two-dimensional, 144-site tweezer array. This platform will enable advances in quantum information processing, quantum simulation, and precision measurement. The demonstrated narrow-line Doppler imaging may also be applied in tweezer arrays or quantum gas microscopes using other atoms with similar transitions, such as erbium and dysprosium.
We present an experimental system for Rydberg tweezer arrays with ytterbium (Yb) atoms featuring internal state manipulation between the ground 1{}^11S0_00​ and the metastable 3{}^33P2_22​ states, and single-photon excitation from the 3{}^33P2_22​ to Rydberg states. In the experiments, single Yb atoms are trapped in two-dimensional arrays of optical tweezers and are detected by fluorescence imaging with the intercombination 1{}^11S0↔3_0 \leftrightarrow {}^30​↔3P1_11​ transition, and the defect-free single atom arrays are prepared by the rearrangement with the feedaback. We successfully perform high-resolution 1{}^11S0↔3_0\leftrightarrow {}^30​↔3P2_22​ state spectroscopy for the single atoms, demonstrating the utilities of this ultranarrow transition. We further perform single-photon excitation from the 3{}^33P2_22​ to Rydberg states for the single atoms, which is a key for the efficient Rydberg excitation. We also perform a systematic measurement of a complex energy structure of a series of D states including newly observed 3{}^33D3_33​ states. The developed system shows feasibility of future experiments towards quantum simulations and computations using single Yb atoms.
In recent years, optical tweezer arrays of neutral atoms have attracted much attention as a platform for implementing quantum computers. The neutral atom quantum computers are a promising candidate for fault-tolerant quantum computation due to their high controllability and scalability based on the technique of reconfigurable optical tweezers array and the use of Rydberg states to realize a two-qubit gate between two distant atoms in the optical tweezers. In this paper, we will give an overview of the neutral atom quantum computer and its technical issues and introduce our research using atoms in an optical tweezer array.
Neutral atom qubits with Rydberg-mediated interactions are a leading platform for developing large-scale coherent quantum systems. In the majority of experiments to date, the Rydberg states are not trapped by the same potential that confines ground state atoms, resulting in atom loss and constraints on the achievable interaction time. In this Letter, we demonstrate that the Rydberg states of an alkaline earth atom, ytterbium, can be stably trapped by the same red-detuned optical tweezer that also confines the ground state, by leveraging the polarizability of the Yb^{+} ion core. Using the previously unobserved ^{3}S_{1} series, we demonstrate trapped Rydberg atom lifetimes exceeding 100 μs, and observe no evidence of auto- or photoionization from the trap light for these states. We measure a coherence time of T_{2}=59 μs between two Rydberg levels, exceeding the 28 μs lifetime of untrapped Rydberg atoms under the same conditions. These results are promising for extending the interaction time of Rydberg atom arrays for quantum simulation and computing, and are vital to capitalize on the extended Rydberg lifetimes in circular states or cryogenic environments.
Neutral atom arrays have emerged as a powerful platform for quantum computation, simulation, and metrology.Among them, alkaline-earth-like atoms exhibit distinct advantages, including long coherence time, high-fidelity Rydberg gates, and erasure correction for efficient quantum error correction. However, their scalability has lagged behind that of the alkali atoms. Here, we report 2400 ytterbium-174 atoms trapped in an optical tweezer array with enhanced loading efficiency of 83.5(1)\% via blue-detuned light-assisted collisions. We develop a quantitative model of the collision dynamics and find good agreement between the calculated inelastic collision rates and the experimentally measured loading efficiencies.Notably, the loading efficiency is largely maintained for array sizes ranging from dozens to thousands, exhibiting excellent scalability. We further demonstrate that the enhancement exists robustly across a range of interatomic potentials, suggesting its utility for other atomic species. To establish the capability of the 174^{174}174Yb arrays toward universal quantum computation, we propose to encode the qubit in the ground-clock state manifold and estimate a 99.9\% two-qubit gate fidelity with experimentally feasible parameters. Our work advances the prospects for realizing large-scale quantum computers using alkaline-earth-like atoms.