Rydberg atoms in optical tweezers near a nanophotonic cavity

While Rydberg arrays have emerged as a promising platform for quantum computation, their integration with a photonic interface could enable fast readout for error correction and quantum networking. This is challenging due to the strong electric field polarizability of Rydberg atoms, making them extremely sensitive to surface charges. Here we place Rydberg atoms in optical tweezers near a nanophotonic cavity and measure their coherence properties as a function of their distance from the cavity. At distances shorter than 100um, the fluctuations of the electric field are prohibitively large. At larger distances, decoupling sequences can be used to preserve coherence. Such distances can easily be bridged by using AODs [1]. Furthermore, we have demonstrated entanglement transport away from the nanophotonic cavity [2]. This renders the nanophotonic cavity a promising candidate for a photonic link for Rydberg arrays, situated a few hundred micrometers away.

[1] Bluvstein et. al., arxiv: 2112.03923.

[2] Dordevic et. al., Science 373, 1511 (2021).