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Quantum science with optical tweezer arrays of ultracold atoms and molecules

Nature Physics volume 17, pages 1324–1333 (2021)Cite this article

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Abstract

Single atoms and molecules can be trapped in tightly focused beams of light that form ‘optical tweezers’, affording exquisite capabilities for the control and detection of individual particles. This approach has progressed to creating tweezer arrays holding hundreds of atoms, resulting in a platform for controlling large many-particle quantum systems. Here we review this new approach to microscopic control of scalable atomic and molecular neutral quantum systems, its future prospects, and applications in quantum information processing, quantum simulation and metrology.

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Fig. 1: Neutral atoms in optical tweezers.
Fig. 2: Entropy mitigation by rearrangement and ground-state cooling.
Fig. 3: Two-qubit gates with Rydberg atoms.
Fig. 4: Experiments with alkaline-earth atoms in tweezers.
Fig. 5: Two approaches to fully controlled single molecules in tweezers.

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Acknowledgements

We thank W. Cairncross for assisting with the preparation of Fig. 5, and N. Schine and L. Liu for critical reading of the manuscript. A.M.K. acknowledges support from NIST. K.-K.N. acknowledges support from the AROSR (FA9550-19-1-0089).

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  1. JILA, NIST and Department of Physics, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO, USA

    Adam M. Kaufman

  2. Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Kang-Kuen Ni

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Kaufman, A.M., Ni, KK. Quantum science with optical tweezer arrays of ultracold atoms and molecules. Nat. Phys. 17, 1324–1333 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-021-01357-2

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