Rydberg Computers

Neutral atoms trapped in near-arbitrary lattice geometries via laser tweezers are a recent entrant to quantum computing architectures. These devices offer both analog and digital (gate-based) opportunities for quantum information processing. These technologies are highly scalable, and even today can achieve system sizes numbering hundreds of qubits, with coherence times supporting tens of single-qubit Rabi oscillations, and coherence lengths that span the whole system size. These features make neutral-atoms trapped by laser tweezers prime platforms to study new ways to encode quantum algorithms and test limits and boundaries of quantum information processing.

Such arrays of neutral atoms have also emerged as a powerful platform to study strongly correlated quantum many-body phases and their dynamics. From a condensed matter physicist’s perspective, these platforms host a variety of intriguing phases of quantum matter are remarkably rich: they permit multiple choices of lattice geometries, disorder, temporal profiles including quenches, as well as measurements of observables, both local and nonlocal.

Neutral-atom analog quantum processors have recently been made available on the cloud, and anyone can run their experiments of choice. This tutorial will also provide the foundations to run algorithms on QuEra’s neutral atom quantum processor Aquila. It will cover the foundations of its programmability, flexibility of problem encoding, and we will provide an overview of its most recent results including new phases, lattice gauge theory phenomenology, and optimization. We will provide the audience with a perspective on open problems and research directions of interest.

Topics

• Rydberg Hamiltonians

• Adiabatic state preparation, Landau-Zener mechanism, and Kibble-Zurek phenomenology

• Phase diagrams in one and two spatial dimensions

• Symmetry-breaking and topological phases of matter, quantum spin liquids

• High-energy phenomenology, lattice gauge theories, string breaking

• Quantum optimization and computing implications

• Running experiments on neutral atom quantum processors