Scaling up 2D atom array platform with 87Rb Rydberg atoms

In recent years, platforms of many interacting spins in a controlled environment have received increasing interest. They are useful for engineering spin Hamiltonians to study and model real-world complex problems in regimes that classical computers cannot exactly solve. Typically, the ability of a classical computer to efficiently solve the many-body dynamics decreases with the number of spins in the system. In this work we present our efforts to increase the number of individually trapped atoms in our 2D optical tweezer arrays. We report on a record of 361 atoms assembled in a geometrically user-defined array of tweezers in a ultra-high vacuum and cryogenic environment at about 4 K, which led to an atom lifetime in the tweezers of about 6000 s. The performance of the assembler was measured for arrays of 324 atoms, where a defect-free configuration was realized in 37% of the attempts. Achieving this result required equalizing the loading rate of the ensemble of traps, yielding a homogeneous top performance of 50-60% probability of trapping an atom in the tweezers. The equalization was implemented in a closed-loop optimization algorithm to compensate for optical aberrations in the trap beams by controlling the power on each trap generated by a spatial light modulator (SLM).