Quantum Science with Ytterbium Atom Arrays

Arrays of neutral atoms trapped in optical tweezers are a leading architecture for quantum simulation and quantum computing protocols. Alkaline-earth atoms offer many potential advantages including extremely long nuclear spin coherence times for quantum information storage and narrow optical transitions for use in efficient laser-cooling, metrology and precision measurement. We describe our progress using Yb atoms trapped in reconfigurable, magic-wavelength (532 nm) optical tweezers. We achieve high atom detection fidelity by simultaneously cooling and imaging on the ¹S₀ - ³P₁ transition [1]. We can then drive Rydberg excitations to investigate interactions in the atom array. In contrast to previous experiments where the traps are turned off during Rydberg excitation to avoid loss, we show that atoms in the Rydberg state can be stably trapped in our optical tweezers by leveraging the polarizability of the Yb⁺ core thus improving versatility and extending the lifetime for interactions [2]. We will also discuss ongoing efforts to realize highly coherent Rydberg operations and the use of the 171Yb nuclear spin qubit.

 

[1] S. Saskin et. al. Phys. Rev. Lett. 122, 143002 (2019)

[2] J. Wilson et. al. arXiv 1912.08754 (2019)