Optical Tweezer Arrays with Ytterbium Atoms for Studying Quantum Phenomena
© The Physical Society of Japan
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High-resolution Spectroscopy and Single-Photon Rydberg Excitation of Reconfigurable Ytterbium Atom Tweezer Arrays Utilizing a Metastable State
(JPSJ Editors' Choice)
J. Phys. Soc. Jpn. 91, 084301 (2022).
A neutral Rydberg atom tweezer array is a promising platform for quantum computation. In this study, featuring its metastable excited state, an array of single ytterbium atoms trapped in micro-optical tweezers was constructed. This overcomes many problems in conventional systems using alkali atoms.
A system of cold atoms is ideal to explore quantum physics owing to its cleanliness, controllability, and isolation from the environment. By observing the behavior of atoms in an optical lattice, for example, the quantum simulation of the Hubbard model that is difficult to trace with a classical computer has been demonstrated successfully.
Recently, a new platform that uses single atoms trapped in individually controllable optical tweezer arrays and strong interactions mediated by Rydberg states has emerged and been attracting attention toward quantum computing as well as quantum simulation. Using this system, various experiments ranging from the observation of quantum phase transition to gate operations on multiple qubits have been performed.
Whereas one-electron atoms, or alkali-atoms, have been used in most previous experiments, two-electron atoms such as ytterbium (Yb) or strontium (Sr) have many advantages over them. The existence of the metastable excited state is a remarkable example. These states enable coherent optical transition from the ground state, in addition to single photon excitation to Rydberg states with minimal decoherence. These features are beneficial toward the realization of quantum computing.
The authors succeeded in constructing a two-dimensional Yb atom array that is detected by fluorescence imaging with the inter-combination 1S0-3P1 transition and preparing the defect-free atom array by the rearrangement with the feedback. They also exploited the metastable excited 3P2 state with radiative lifetime on the order of seconds. High-resolution 1S0-3P2 state spectroscopy for the single atoms was performed, demonstrating the utilities of this ultranarrow transition. They further performed single-photon excitation from the 3P2 state to Rydberg states and the systematic spectroscopy, in which a complex energy structure of a series of D states was measured, including the newly observed 3D3 states. This offers new insights into the analysis of Yb Rydberg states.
These achievements will be the foundation toward the quantum computing architecture based on neutral two-electron atoms.
(written by D. Okuno on behalf of all authors.)
High-resolution Spectroscopy and Single-Photon Rydberg Excitation of Reconfigurable Ytterbium Atom Tweezer Arrays Utilizing a Metastable State
(JPSJ Editors' Choice)
J. Phys. Soc. Jpn. 91, 084301 (2022).