Nuclear spin qubits encoded in the metastable state of neutral ¹⁷¹Yb atoms

Neutral atom qubits in optical tweezer arrays is a rapidly advancing field in quantum science. ¹⁷¹Yb has several unique advantages including a highly coherent nuclear spin with I=1/2, and versatile controllability [1, 2]. In this talk, we present ongoing work to implement qubits encoded in the nuclear spin sublevels of the metastable ³P₀ electronic state. This allows fast, single-photon Rydberg excitation and a path towards low-overhead fault-tolerant quantum computing based on erasure conversion [3]. We demonstrate a novel approach to fast, high-fidelity initialization and readout from ³P₀ that does not require a clock laser or magic wavelength optical tweezers. We also characterize one- and two-qubit gates, and discuss potential approaches to local gate control.