Alpha Gaëtan

Observation of collective excitation of two individual atoms in the Rydberg blockade regime

When two single Rydberg atoms—those with electrons in highly excited states—interact, one can be used to control the quantum state of the other. Two independent experiments demonstrate such ‘Rydberg blockade’, an effect that might make long-range quantum gates between neutral atoms possible.

Entanglement of Two Individual Neutral Atoms Using Rydberg Blockade

We report the generation of entanglement between two individual 87Rb atoms in hyperfine ground states |F=1,M=1> and |F=2,M=2> which are held in two optical tweezers separated by 4 microm. Our scheme relies on the Rydberg blockade effect which prevents the simultaneous excitation of the two atoms to a Rydberg state. The entangled state is generated in about 200 ns using pulsed two-photon excitation. We quantify the entanglement by applying global Raman rotations on both atoms. We measure that 61% of the initial pairs of atoms are still present at the end of the entangling sequence. These pairs are in the target entangled state with a fidelity of 0.75.

Two-dimensional transport and transfer of a single atomic qubit in optical tweezers

Quantum computers have the capability of out-performing their classical counterparts for certain computational problems. Several scalable quantum-computing architectures have been proposed. An attractive architecture is a large set of physically independent qubits arranged in three spatial regions where (1) the initialized qubits are stored in a register, (2) two qubits are brought together to realize a gate and (3) the readout of the qubits is carried out. For a neutral-atom-based architecture, a natural way to connect these regions is to use optical tweezers to move qubits within the system. In this letter we demonstrate the coherent transport of a qubit, encoded on an atom trapped in a submicrometre tweezer, over a distance typical of the separation between atoms in an array of optical traps. Furthermore, we transfer a qubit between two tweezers, and show that this manipulation also preserves the coherence of the qubit.

Coherent excitation of a single atom to a Rydberg state

We present the coherent excitation of a single Rubidium atom to the Rydberg state 58d{sub 3/2} using a two-photon transition. The experimental setup is described in detail, as are experimental techniques and procedures. The coherence of the excitation is revealed by observing Rabi oscillations between ground and Rydberg states of the atom. We analyze the observed oscillations in detail and compare them to numerical simulations which include imperfections of our experimental system. Strategies for future improvements on the coherent manipulation of a single atom in our settings are given.

Analysis of the entanglement between two individual atoms using global Raman rotations

Making use of the Rydberg blockade, we generate entanglement between two atoms individually trapped in two optical tweezers. In this paper, we detail the analysis of the data and show that we can determine the amount of entanglement between the atoms in the presence of atom losses during the entangling sequence. Our model takes into account states outside the qubit basis and allows us to perform a partial reconstruction of the density matrix describing the two-atom state. With this method, we extract the amount of entanglement between pairs of atoms still trapped after the entangling sequence and measure the fidelity with respect to the expected Bell state. We find a fidelity Fpairs=0.74(7) for the 62% of atom pairs remaining in the traps at the end of the entangling sequence.

Controllable Interactions between Rydberg Atoms and Ultracold Plasmas

We discuss the control of dipole-dipole interactions in a frozen assembly of Rydberg atoms. We report the evidence of dipole blockade of the Rydberg excitation for two configurations: dipole blockade induced by electric field and dipole blockade in Forster resonance. We demonstrate that two individual atoms separated by ~ 4 μm can act as a collective dipole if their interaction is strong enough to be in the dipole blockade regime. This observation is crucial for the quantum entanglement of two or more atoms using dipole-dipole interaction. The dipole-dipole interactions between Rydberg atoms are also responsible for Penning ionization leading to the formation of an ultracold plasma. We have demonstrated that Penning ionization of np Rydberg cesium atoms can be prevented by considering repulsive dipole-dipole interactions.

Entanglement of two ground state neutral atoms using Rydberg blockade

We report on our recent progress in trapping and manipulation of internal states of single neutral rubidium atoms in optical tweezers. We demonstrate the creation of an entangled state between two ground state atoms trapped in separate tweezers using the effect of Rydberg blockade. The quality of the entanglement is measured using global rotations of the internal states of both atoms.

Entanglement of two individual atoms using the Rydberg blockade

We report on our recent progress on the manipulation of single rubidium atoms trapped in optical tweezers and the generation of entanglement between two atoms, each individually trapped in neighboring tweezers. To create an entangled state of two atoms in their ground states, we make use of the Rydberg blockade mechanism. The degree of entanglement is measured using global rotations of the internal states of both atoms. Such internal state rotations on a single atom are demonstrated with a high fidelity.

Recent progress on the manipulation of single atoms in optical tweezers for quantum computing

Our group is interested in neutral atom quantum computing. With this goal in mind, we have recently shown how a single rubidium atom trapped in an optical tweezer can be used to store, manipulate and measure a qubit. I will detail in this talk how we trap and observe a single atom in an optical tweezer created by focusing a far-off resonant laser down to a sub-micron waist1. Our qubit is encoded on the |0〉 = |F = 1, M = 0〉 and |1〉 = |F = 2, M = 0〉 hyperfine sublevels of a rubidium 87 atom. We initialize the qubit by optical pumping. We read the state of the qubit using a state selective measurement limited by the quantum projection noise. We perform single qubit operation by driving a two-photon Raman transition. We have measured the coherence time of our qubit by Ramsey interferometry. After applying a spin-echo sequence, we have found an irreversible dephasing time of about 40 ms 2. To perform a computation, a feature is the ability to perform a gate between two arbitrary qubits of the register. As a first step, we have demonstrated a scheme where the qubit is transfered between to tweezers with no loss of coherence and no change in the external degrees of freedom of the atom. We have then moved the atom over distances typical of the separation between atoms in an array of dipole traps, and shown that this transport does not affect the coherence of the qubit3. Finally, I will present our progress towards entangling two atoms, a key ingredient towards building a two-qubit gate. To create entanglement, we are planning to use a Rydberg blockade mechanism recently observed by several groups4. This blockade has also been proposed to build a phase gate5. I will describe the status of the experiment and show how we excite a single atom to a Rydberg state.