Ytterbium 171 optical tweezer arrays for quantum information and metrology

Neutral atoms in optical tweezer arrays are a promising platform for quantum computation, simulation and metrology. Previous tweezer systems have mainly focused on alkali atoms and bosonic alkaline earth(-like) atoms because of their relatively simple atomic structures. Here, we present a new optical tweezer array platform with ¹⁷¹Yb, a fermionic alkaline earth-like atom with nuclear spin 1/2. The naturally two-level nuclear spin qubit benefits from long coherence times in both the ground electronic state (¹S₀) and metastable clock state (³P₀). This structure will enable projective measurement of certain qubits while preserving the quantum information stored in other qubits, a prerequisite for many quantum error correction protocols as well as enhanced optical clock interrogation schemes. The clock state can also be excited to a Rydberg state by a single-photon transition, enabling fast two-qubit gates and allowing for highly coherent quantum simulation. Towards these goals, here we report scalable, near-deterministic single-atom preparation and detection of ¹⁷¹Yb arrays and demonstrate high-fidelity, sub-microsecond-scale manipulation of the nuclear spin qubit with seconds-scale coherence times. We further describe our progress towards the realization of mid-circuit measurement as well as Rydberg-based two-qubit gates and quantum simulations.