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High-fidelity entanglement and detection of alkaline-earth Rydberg atoms

Nature Physics volume 16, pages 857–861 (2020)Cite this article

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An Author Correction to this article was published on 04 November 2020

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Abstract

Trapped neutral atoms have become a prominent platform for quantum science, where entanglement fidelity records have been set using highly excited Rydberg states. However, controlled two-qubit entanglement generation has so far been limited to alkali species, leaving the exploitation of more complex electronic structures as an open frontier that could lead to improved fidelities and fundamentally different applications such as quantum-enhanced optical clocks. Here, we demonstrate a novel approach utilizing the two-valence electron structure of individual alkaline-earth Rydberg atoms. We find fidelities for Rydberg state detection, single-atom Rabi operations and two-atom entanglement that surpass previously published values. Our results pave the way for novel applications, including programmable quantum metrology and hybrid atom–ion systems, and set the stage for alkaline-earth based quantum computing architectures.

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Fig. 1: Population and detection of Rydberg states in non-interacting and interacting configurations.
Fig. 2: Rabi oscillations and auto-ionization.
Fig. 3: Long-time Rabi oscillations for single and blockaded atoms.
Fig. 4: Short-time Rydberg-blockaded Rabi oscillations with tweezers off and on.

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Data availability

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

Change history

  • 04 November 2020

    An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper.

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Acknowledgements

We acknowledge discussions with C. Greene and H. Levine as well as funding provided by the Institute for Quantum Information and Matter, an NSF Physics Frontiers Center grant (no. PHY-1733907), an NSF CAREER award (1753386), AFOSR YIP (FA9550-19-1-0044), the Sloan Foundation and F. Blum. Research was carried out at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the California Institute of Technology under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and funded through the President’s and Director’s Research and Development Fund (PDRDF). J.P.C. acknowledges support from the PMA Prize postdoctoral fellowship and J.C. acknowledges support from the IQIM postdoctoral fellowship. H.P. acknowledges support by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation. A.K. acknowledges funding from the Larson SURF fellowship and Caltech Student-Faculty Programs.

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Author notes

  1. Alexandre Cooper

    Present address: Institute for Quantum Computing, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada

  2. These authors contributed equally: Ivaylo S. Madjarov, Jacob P. Covey.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Division of Physics, Mathematics and Astronomy, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA

    Ivaylo S. Madjarov, Jacob P. Covey, Adam L. Shaw, Joonhee Choi, Anant Kale, Alexandre Cooper, Hannes Pichler & Manuel Endres

  2. Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA

    Vladimir Schkolnik & Jason R. Williams

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Contributions

M.E. conceived the idea and initiated the study. I.S.M., J.P.C., A.L.S., J.C., A.C. and V.S. designed and carried out the experiments. I.S.M., J.P.C., A.L.S., J.C., A.K. and H.P. performed theory and simulation work. I.S.M., J.P.C., A.L.S. and J.C. contributed to data analysis. I.S.M., J.P.C., A.L.S., J.C. and M.E. contributed to writing the manuscript and the Supplementary Information. J.P.C., J.R.W. and M.E. supervised and guided this work.

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Correspondence to Manuel Endres.

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Peer review information Nature Physics thanks Markus Hennrich, Thierry Lahaye and Wenhui Li for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Madjarov, I.S., Covey, J.P., Shaw, A.L. et al. High-fidelity entanglement and detection of alkaline-earth Rydberg atoms. Nat. Phys. 16, 857–861 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-020-0903-z

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