Parallel addressing of a 3D array of Neutral Atom Qubits

We describe a technique for selective and parallel addressing of neutral atom qubits in a three-dimensional array. Two pairs of acousto-optic deflectors generate two 7x7 laser beam arrays. Each array is reflected from a digital micromirror device (DMD), which is used to both equalize the powers in the beams and to allow individual beams to be turned on and off independently. The two laser beam arrays are directed at the atom array from orthogonal directions. When combined with off-resonant microwaves, a targeted single-qubit phase gate can be implemented at every site where two laser beams intersect, while leaving the quantum states of non-targeted atoms unaffected [1]. Multiple qubits can be targeted at once, so that the number of steps required to implement a single-qubit gate on an arbitrary pattern of N qubits scales as N^1/3. This technique is particularly well-suited for investigating 3D cluster states, since the measurement of a cluster state’s stabilizers aligns naturally with a checkerboard addressing pattern.



[1] Y. Wang, A. Kumar, T.-Y. Wu, D. S. Weiss, "Single-qubit gates based on targeted phase shifts in a 3D neutral atom array," Science 352, 1562 (2016).