Faculty Candidate Seminar
Advancing Quantum Science with Ytterbium Atom Arrays
Alexander BurgersPostdoctoral ScholarPrinceton
WHERE:
1690 Beyster BuildingMap
WHEN:
Wednesday, March 9, 2022 @ 9:00 am - 10:30 am
This event is free and open to the publicAdd to Google Calendar
This event is free and open to the publicAdd to Google Calendar
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Abstract:
Neutral atom arrays are a rapidly developing platform for quantum science. Rydberg-mediated entanglement between atoms has led to numerous advances in quantum computing and quantum simulation using this platform. An emerging frontier within this field is the use of alkaline earth-like atoms (AEAs) such as ytterbium (Yb). The rich internal structure of these atoms affords numerous unique capabilities, including efficient Doppler cooling, optical clock transitions for metrology applications, efficient control of Rydberg gate operations using light shifts from ion core transitions, and the capability to encode qubits in the nuclear spin of the J = 0 electronic ground state of fermionic AEA isotopes. In this talk I will describe our experimental platform for trapping and manipulating Yb atoms in optical tweezer arrays. I will discuss our recent results utilizing transitions in the Yb+ ion core to generate light shifts that control excitations to the Rydberg state, which can be used for efficient local control of quantum gate operations [1]. I will then present our work demonstrating a universal set of quantum gate operations, including two-qubit gates through the Rydberg state, using qubits encoded in the nuclear spin of 171Yb [2]. We observe long qubit coherence times, T2* = 1.24 s, as well as high-fidelity single-qubit operations, F1Q = 0.99959. These results mark the first such demonstration of a universal set of quantum gates for nuclear qubits in AEAs and lay the foundation for scalable quantum computing architectures with Yb atom arrays.
[1] A P Burgers et al. arXiv: 2110.06902 (2021)
[2] S Ma*, A P Burgers* et al. arXiv: 2112.06799 (2021)
Bio:
Alex Burgers is currently a postdoctoral scholar at Princeton University in the lab of Jeff Thompson. His current research centers on trapping and manipulating Ytterbium atoms in optical tweezers for quantum information science applications. He received his undergraduate degree in physics from Washington University in St. Louis and his PhD in physics from the University of Michigan with Duncan Steel, studying quantum optics by using optically active quantum dots. From there, he took a postdoctoral position at Caltech in Jeff Kimble’s group, studying the coupling of cold atoms to photonic crystal waveguides. He is intrigued and driven by the breadth of physics questions that can be investigated using these quantum systems, and excited by their applications to useful technologies.