Towards fault-tolerant quantum computing using ¹⁷¹Yb metastable state qubits

Neutral atoms in optical tweezer arrays is a blooming frontier in the field of quantum sciences. In particular, alkaline earth atoms (AEAs), including Yb, offer unique advantages for quantum computing due to their rich energy level structure. Recently, we demonstrated universal control of qubits encoded in the nuclear spin of the ¹S₀ ground state, including one- and two-qubit gates [1]. In this poster, we will present ongoing work to implement qubits in the nuclear spin of the metastable ³P₀ state, which offers numerous potential advantages including single-photon excitation to the Rydberg state, efficient and robust local control using light shifts [2], and efficient, low-overhead quantum error correction (QEC) using erasure conversion [3]. We will also present an optical modulator based on a combined spatial light modulator and digital micromirror device capable of locally programming gates on over 10,000 sites at update rates of 47 kHz, with a contrast over 40,000:1 and a crosstalk below 10^-4 at spot separations of 5 beam waists. Finally, we will discuss novel approaches to QEC leveraging the biased erasure error model of metastable ¹⁷¹Yb qubits, enabling surface code thresholds exceeding 8%.

[1] Ma, S, et al. Physical Review X 12.2 (2022): 021028.

[2] Burgers, AP, et al. PRX Quantum 3.2 (2022): 020326.

[3] Wu, Y, et al. Nature communications 13.1 (2022): 4657.