Fast Qubit Readout and Quantum Networking with Neutral Atoms in High Numerical Aperture Cavity Arrays

Quantum information has the potential to provide entirely new capabilities in areas ranging from cryptography to computation. However, harnessing this potential remains an open challenge: the hardware to perform these tasks requires further development in order to reach useful scales. One hardware approach uses individually trapped neutral atoms as quantum bits controlled with laser light. Towards this end, the principal investigator (PI), graduate students and undergraduate students will investigate a new method of strongly coupling arrays of neutral atoms to single optical photons. This will allow neutral atom arrays to perform faster and more reliably, enhancing quantum information processing capabilities. The work will advance efforts towards useful quantum computation and quantum networking. The PI, graduate students and undergraduate students will develop arrays of high numerical aperture optical cavities, each strongly coupled to an individual neutral atom qubit. Using high numerical aperture optics substantially relaxes the finesse requirements needed to achieve strong coupling, expanding the design space for such systems. The research group will interface individual cold rubidium atoms with this type of cavity array. This approach will scalably introduce the cavity QED (quantum electrodynamics) toolkit to neutral atom qubit arrays, a leading quantum information platform. These cavity QED techniques will enable fast readout and high bandwidth entanglement distribution with arrays of neutral atom qubits, overcoming key obstacles on the route to usefully leveraging the unique capabilities of quantum information processing. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.