Coherence and Rydberg Blockade of Atomic Ensemble Qubits

Demonstration of a Quantum Gate Using Electromagnetically Induced Transparency

We demonstrate a native CNOT gate between two individually addressed neutral atoms based on electromagnetically induced transparency. This protocol utilizes the strong long-range interactions of Rydberg states to enable conditional state transfer on the target qubit when operated in the blockade regime. An advantage of this scheme is it enables implementation of multiqubit CNOT^{k} gates using a pulse sequence independent of qubit number, providing a simple gate for efficient implementation of digital quantum algorithms and stabilizer measurements for quantum error correction. We achieve a loss corrected gate fidelity of F_{CNOT}^{cor}=0.82(6), and prepare an entangled Bell state with F_{Bell}^{cor}=0.66(5), limited at present by laser power. We present a number of technical improvements to advance this to a level required for fault-tolerant scaling.

Deterministic Time-Bin Entanglement between a Single Photon and an Atomic Ensemble

Hybrid matter-photon entanglement is the building block for quantum networks. It is very favorable if the entanglement can be prepared with a high probability. In this Letter, we report the deterministic creation of entanglement between an atomic ensemble and a single photon by harnessing the Rydberg blockade. We design a scheme that creates entanglement between a single photon's temporal modes and the Rydberg levels that host a collective excitation, using a process of cyclical retrieving and patching. The hybrid entanglement is tested via retrieving the atomic excitation as a second photon and performing correlation measurements, which suggest an entanglement fidelity of 87.8%. Our source of matter-photon entanglement will enable the entangling of remote quantum memories with much higher efficiency.

Fast Preparation and Detection of a Rydberg Qubit Using Atomic Ensembles

We demonstrate a new approach for fast preparation, manipulation, and collective readout of an atomic Rydberg-state qubit. By making use of Rydberg blockade inside a small atomic ensemble, we prepare a single qubit within 3  μs with a success probability of F_{p}=0.93±0.02, rotate it, and read out its state in 6  μs with a single-shot fidelity of F_{d}=0.92±0.04. The ensemble-assisted detection is 10^{3} times faster than imaging of a single atom with the same optical resolution, and enables fast repeated nondestructive measurement. We observe qubit coherence times of 15  μs, much longer than the π rotation time of 90 ns. Potential applications ranging from faster quantum information processing in atom arrays to efficient implementation of quantum error correction are discussed.

Dynamical structure factors of dynamical quantum simulators

The dynamical structure factor is one of the experimental quantities crucial in scrutinizing the validity of the microscopic description of strongly correlated systems. However, despite its long-standing importance, it is exceedingly difficult in generic cases to numerically calculate it, ensuring that the necessary approximations involved yield a correct result. Acknowledging this practical difficulty, we discuss in what way results on the hardness of classically tracking time evolution under local Hamiltonians are precisely inherited by dynamical structure factors and, hence, offer in the same way the potential computational capabilities that dynamical quantum simulators do: We argue that practically accessible variants of the dynamical structure factors are bounded-error quantum polynomial time ([Formula: see text])-hard for general local Hamiltonians. Complementing these conceptual insights, we improve upon a novel, readily available measurement setup allowing for the determination of the dynamical structure factor in different architectures, including arrays of ultra-cold atoms, trapped ions, Rydberg atoms, and superconducting qubits. Our results suggest that quantum simulations employing near-term noisy intermediate-scale quantum devices should allow for the observation of features of dynamical structure factors of correlated quantum matter in the presence of experimental imperfections, for larger system sizes than what is achievable by classical simulation.

Controlling the Dipole Blockade and Ionization Rate of Rydberg Atoms in Strong Electric Fields

We study a hitherto unexplored regime of the Rydberg excitation blockade using highly Stark-shifted, yet long-living, states of Rb atoms subject to electric fields above the classical ionization limit. Such states allow tuning the dipole-dipole interaction strength while their ionization rate can be changed over 2 orders of magnitude by small variations of the electric field. We demonstrate laser excitation of the interacting Rydberg states followed by their detection using controlled ionization and magnified imaging with high spatial and temporal resolution. Our work reveals new possibilities to engineer the interaction strength and dynamically control the ionization and detection of Rydberg atoms, which can be useful for realizing and assessing quantum simulators that vary in space and time.

Unitary and Nonunitary Quantum Cellular Automata with Rydberg Arrays

We propose a physical realization of quantum cellular automata (QCA) using arrays of ultracold atoms excited to Rydberg states. The key ingredient is the use of programmable multifrequency couplings which generalize the Rydberg blockade and facilitation effects to a broader set of nonadditive, unitary and nonunitary (dissipative) conditional interactions. Focusing on a 1D array we define a set of elementary QCA rules that generate complex and varied quantum dynamical behavior. Finally, we demonstrate theoretically that Rydberg QCA is ideally suited for variational quantum optimization protocols and quantum state engineering by finding parameters that generate highly entangled states as the steady state of the quantum dynamics.

Indirect light-matter interaction in dissipative coupled cavities

We examine the dynamics of evolution for an ensemble of three-level Λ atoms localized in a coupled cavity. In this scheme, when many atoms interact with one of the cavities, we observe Rabi oscillations between an atom and the other cavity. We show strong coupling between the ensemble and cavity is not necessary. The effective coupling can be improved by increasing the number of atoms. When the amplitude of the classical field is not equal to the photon hopping rate, for zero detunings, we achieve resonance and observe oscillations. The excited state of the atoms in one cavity may be eliminated hence suppressing atomic spontaneous emissions with an increase in the number of atoms. The optimal process range of hopping rate and classical field amplitude are found to optimize performance for a given parametric condition.

Realization of a Rydberg-Dressed Ramsey Interferometer and Electrometer

We present the experimental realization and characterization of a Ramsey interferometer based on optically trapped ultracold potassium atoms, where one state is continuously coupled by an off-resonant laser field to a highly excited Rydberg state. We show that the observed interference signals can be used to precisely measure the Rydberg atom-light coupling strength as well as the population and coherence decay rates of the Rydberg-dressed states with subkilohertz accuracy and for Rydberg state fractions as small as one part in 10^{6}. We also demonstrate an application for measuring small, static electric fields with high sensitivity. This provides the means to combine the outstanding coherence properties of Ramsey interferometers based on atomic ground states with a controllable coupling to strongly interacting states, thus expanding the number of systems suitable for metrological applications and many-body physics studies.

Deterministic Free-Space Source of Single Photons Using Rydberg Atoms

We propose an efficient free-space scheme to create single photons in a well-defined spatiotemporal mode. To that end, we first prepare a single source atom in an excited Rydberg state. The source atom interacts with a large ensemble of ground-state atoms via a laser-mediated dipole-dipole exchange interaction. Using an adiabatic passage with a chirped laser pulse, we produce a spatially extended spin wave of a single Rydberg excitation in the ensemble, accompanied by the transition of the source atom to another Rydberg state. The collective atomic excitation can then be converted to a propagating optical photon via a coherent coupling field. In contrast to previous approaches, our single-photon source does not rely on the strong coupling of a single emitter to a resonant cavity, nor does it require the heralding of collective excitation or complete Rydberg blockade of multiple excitations in the atomic ensemble.

Twists in nonlinear magneto-optic rotation with cold atoms

We observe a narrow secondary dispersive feature nested within conventional nonlinear magneto-optical rotation (NMOR) signals obtained with a laser-cooled rubidium vapor. A similar feature has been previously named a "twist" by Budker et. al., in the context of warm vapor optical magnetometry [Phys. Rev. A. 81, 5788-5791 (1998)], and was ascribed to simultaneous optical pumping through multiple nearby hyperfine levels. In this work the twist is observed in a cold atom vapor, where the hyperfine levels are individually addressable, and thus is due to a different mechanism. We experimentally and numerically characterize this twist in terms of magnetic field strength, polarization, and optical intensity and find good agreement between our data and numerical models. We find that the twist width is proportional to the magnetic field in the transverse direction, and therefore two independent directions of the magnetic field can be measured simultaneously. This technique is useful as a simple and rapid in-situ method for nulling background magnetic fields.

Arbitrary Dicke-State Control of Symmetric Rydberg Ensembles

We study the production of arbitrary superpositions of Dicke states via optimal control. We show that N atomic hyperfine qubits, interacting symmetrically via the Rydberg blockade, are well described by the Jaynes-Cummings Hamiltonian and fully controllable by phase-modulated microwaves driving Rydberg-dressed states. With currently feasible parameters, it is possible to generate states of ∼ten hyperfine qubits in ∼1  μs, assuming a fast microwave phase switching time. The same control can be achieved with a "dressed-ground control" scheme, which reduces the demands for fast phase switching at the expense of increased total control time.

Quantum Network of Atom Clocks: A Possible Implementation with Neutral Atoms

We propose a protocol for creating a fully entangled Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger-type state of neutral atoms in spatially separated optical atomic clocks. In our scheme, local operations make use of the strong dipole-dipole interaction between Rydberg excitations, which give rise to fast and reliable quantum operations involving all atoms in the ensemble. The necessary entanglement between distant ensembles is mediated by single-photon quantum channels and collectively enhanced light-matter couplings. These techniques can be used to create the recently proposed quantum clock network based on neutral atom optical clocks. We specifically analyze a possible realization of this scheme using neutral Yb ensembles.