arXiv subjects

M. Saffman

Publications and source records attributed to M. Saffman.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Neutral atom quantum computing

Neutral atom qubits are one of the leading approaches for implementation of a large scale quantum computer. The original proposals for neutral atom qubits were formulated more than 25 years ago, with first demonstrations of a universal gate set following 10 years later. In the last few years the performance and scale of neutral atom qubit arrays has developed at a rapid pace leading to demonstrations of quantum algorithms, and logical qubits for fault tolerant error correction. This contribution reviews the physics of the neutral atom approach, surveys current capabilities, and provides an outlook for future progress.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2026

Atom--photon Entanglement with a Single Trapped Cesium Atom

We demonstrate atom--photon entanglement using a single cesium atom trapped in an optical tweezer. Entanglement is generated by resonant excitation and subsequent spontaneous decay, which entangles the atomic Zeeman state with photon polarization. The photon is collected with a high numerical aperture objective (NA = 0.55) and coupled into a single-mode fiber, enabling atom photon measurements and measurement of the Bell-state fidelity. We obtain raw entanglement fidelity of ${\mathcal F} = 0.942(16)$ and inferred fidelity of ${\mathcal F}_{\rm inf} = 0.962(26)$ after correcting independently characterized atom measurement errors. Compared with related free-space experiments using $^{87}$Rb, the multilevel structure of the relevant excited state in $^{133}$Cs requires the use of a single short excitation pulse in each entanglement attempt in order to suppress unwanted re-excitation. These results establish a free-space Cs atom--photon interface and provide a step toward dual-species Rb--Cs quantum networking.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2026

Entangling gate performance and fidelity limits with neutral atom F\"orster resonances

Neutral-atom entangling gates are commonly analyzed with a single effective Rydberg-pair state, but near F\"orster resonances the pair manifold contains resonantly coupled interaction channels that change both the control landscape and the achievable fidelity. We develop a two-eigenstate model for this regime and show that when allowing for coupling to both pair states in the resonance, the gate fidelity is bounded by $\mathcal{F}\leq 1-(\pi/2)/(V\tau_R)$, for interaction strength $V$ and Rydberg lifetime $\tau_R$. We construct a gate protocol that saturates this bound in the large-Rabi-frequency limit, improving the existing fidelity limit by approximately $40\%$. We also evaluate common gate protocols near F\"orster resonances and find that retaining the exchange dynamics increases predicted fidelities by up to two orders of magnitude over earlier treatments.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2026

Qubit syndrome measurements with a high fidelity Rb-Cs Rydberg gate

We demonstrate an inter-species entangling Rydberg gate between rubidium (Rb) and cesium (Cs) atoms with fidelity $\mathcal F = 0.975\pm 0.002$. The two-species atom array enables in-place quantum non-demolition (QND) qubit measurements which are a key capability for quantum error correction. We demonstrate this functionality with multi-atom error syndrome measurements achieving QND measurement fidelities of ${\mathcal F}_{\rm QND} = 0.933(12)$ and $0.865(17)$ for two- and three-qubit plaquettes, respectively.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2026

Efficient and compact quantum network node based on a parabolic mirror on an optical chip

We demonstrate a neutral atom networking node that combines high photon collection efficiency with high atom photon entanglement fidelity in a compact, fiber integrated platform. A parabolic mirror is used both to form the trap and to collect fluorescence from a single rubidium atom, intrinsically mode matching $\sigma$ polarized emitted photons to the fiber and rendering the system largely insensitive to small imperfections or drifts. The core optics consist of millimeter scale components that are pre aligned, rigidly bonded on a monolithic in-vacuum assembly, and interfaced entirely via optical fibers. With this design, we measure an overall photon collection and detection efficiency of $5\%$, from which we infer an overall collection efficiency of $9\%$ after the single--mode fiber coupling. We generate atom photon entangled states with a raw Bell state fidelity of 0.93 and an inferred fidelity of 0.98 after correcting for atom readout errors. The same node design has been realized in two independent setups with comparable performance and is compatible with adding high NA objective lenses to create and control atomic arrays at each node. Our results establish a robust, cavity free neutral atom interface that operates near the limit set by the collection optics numerical aperture and provides a practical building block for scalable quantum network nodes and repeaters.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2025

Laser cooling and qubit measurements on a forbidden transition in neutral Cs atoms

We experimentally demonstrate background-free, hyperfine-level-selective measurements of individual Cs atoms by simultaneous cooling to $5.3~\mu\rm K$ and imaging on the $6s_{1/2}\rightarrow 5d_{5/2}$ electric-quadrupole transition. We achieve hyperfine resolved detection with fidelity 0.9993(4) and atom retention of 0.9954(5), limited primarily by vacuum lifetime. Performing state measurements in a 3D cooling configuration enables repeated low loss measurements. A theoretical analysis of an extension of the demonstrated approach based on quenching of the excited state with an auxiliary field, identifies parameters for hyperfine-resolved measurements with a projected fidelity of $\sim 0.9995 $ in $\sim 60~\mu\rm s$.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2025

Experimental observation of subabsorption

We predict and experimentally demonstrate a new type of collective (cooperative) coupling effect where a disordered atomic ensemble absorbs light with a rise-time longer (i. e., at a rate slower) than what is dictated by single-atom physics. This effect, which we name subabsorption, can be viewed as the absorptive analog of subradiance. The experiment is performed using a dilute ensemble of ultracold $^{87}$Rb atoms with a low optical depth, and time-resolving the absorption of a weak (tens of photons per pulse) resonant laser beam. In this dilute regime, the collective interaction relies on establishing dipole-dipole correlations over many atoms; i.e., the interaction is not dominated by the nearest neighbors. As a result, subabsorption is highly susceptible to motional dephasing: even a temperature increase of 60 $\mu$K is enough to completely extinguish the subabsorption signal. We also present a theoretical model whose results are in reasonable agreement with the experimental observations. The model uses density-dependent dephasing rate of the long-range dipole-dipole correlations as a single adjustable parameter. Experiment-theory comparison indicates a dephasing coefficient of $\beta/2 \pi = 4.9 \times 10^{-5}$ Hz~cm$^3$, which is more than two orders of magnitude larger than the known dipole-dipole line broadening coefficient in $^{87}$Rb.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2025

Quantum computing with atomic qubit arrays: confronting the cost of connectivity

These notes present a review of the status of quantum computing with arrays of neutral atom qubits, an approach which has demonstrated remarkable progress in the last few years. Scaling digital quantum computing to qubit counts and control fidelities that will enable solving outstanding scientific questions, and provide commercial value, is an outstanding challenge, not least because of the requirement of connecting and entangling distant qubits. Long-range Rydberg gates and physical motion outfit atomic qubit arrays with tools for establishing connectivity. These tools operate on different timescales and with distinct levels of parallelization. We analyze several prototypical architectures from the perspective of achieving fast connectivity for circuits with large scale entanglement, as well as fast cycle times for measurement based quantum error correcting codes. Extending Rydberg interactions to multiple atomic species has emerged as a promising route to achieving this latter requirement.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2025

Efficient preparation of entangled states in cavity QED with Grover's algorithm

We propose to employ the amplification mechanism of Grover's search algorithm to efficiently prepare entangled states of an ensemble of qubits. The conditional change of sign employed in the algorithm can be implemented by the phase shift of photons scattered on an optical cavity hosting an atomic ensemble. We show that collective Dicke states, GHZ states, and Schr\"odinger cat superpositions of $N$ atoms may be prepared deterministically by few ($\sim N^{1/4}$) photon scattering events without individual addressing of the atoms.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2025

Deterministic carving of quantum states with Grover's algorithm

We show that iteration of a few ( $\sim N^{1/4}$) unitary steps of Grover's algorithm suffices to perfectly prepare a Dicke state of $N$ atoms in a cavity. We also show that a few subsequent Grover steps can be employed to generate GHZ and Cat states. The Grover iteration is physically realized by global qubit rotations and by the phase shift of single photons reflected on the cavity. Our protocols are deterministic and require no individual addressing of the atoms. A detailed error analysis accounting for spatial mode matching of the photon to the cavity, spontaneous emission, mirror scattering, and the finite bandwidth of the photon mode is used to predict the fidelity of the prepared states as a function of system parameters and atom-cavity cooperativity. The fidelity can be increased by heralding on detection of the reflected photon.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2025

Variational simulation of the Lipkin-Meshkov-Glick model on a neutral atom quantum computer

We simulate the Lipkin-Meshkov-Glick (LMG) model using the Variational-Quantum-Eigensolver (VQE) algorithm on a neutral atom quantum computer. We test the ground-state energy of spin systems with up to 15 spins. Two different encoding schemes are used: an individual spin encoding where each spin is represented by one qubit, and an efficient Gray code encoding scheme which only requires a number of qubits that scales with the logarithm of the number of spins. This more efficient encoding, together with zero noise extrapolation techniques, is shown to improve the fidelity of the simulated energies with respect to exact solutions.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2024

A universal neutral-atom quantum computer with individual optical addressing and non-destructive readout

Quantum computers must achieve large-scale, fault-tolerant operation to deliver on their promise of transformational processing power [1-4]. This will require thousands or millions of high-fidelity quantum gates and similar numbers of qubits [5]. Demonstrations using neutral-atom qubits trapped and manipulated by lasers have shown that this modality can provide high two-qubit gate (CZ) fidelities and scalable operation [6-13]. However, the gates in these demonstrations are driven by lasers that do not resolve individual qubits, with universal computation enabled by physical mid-circuit shuttling of the qubits. This relatively slow operation may greatly extend runtimes for useful, large-scale computation. Here we demonstrate a universal neutral-atom quantum computer with gate rates limited by optical switching times, rather than shuttling, by individually addressing tightly focused laser beams at an array of single atoms. We achieve CZ fidelity of 99.35(4)% and local single-qubit RZ gate fidelity of 99.902(8)%. Moreover, we demonstrate non-destructive readout of alkali-atom qubits with 0.9(3)% loss, which boosts operational speed. This technique also enables us to measure a state-of-the-art CZ fidelity of 99.73(3)% when excluding atom-loss events, which may be mitigated through erasure conversion. Our results represent a critical step towards large-scale, fault-tolerant neutral-atom quantum computers that can execute computations on practical timescales.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2024

Fast measurements and multiqubit gates in dual species atomic arrays

We propose and analyze an approach for fast syndrome measurements in an array of rubidium and cesium atomic qubits. The scheme works by implementing an inter-species $\textsf{CNOT}_k$ gate, entangling one cesium ancilla qubit with $k\geq 1$ rubidium qubits which are then used for state measurement. Utilizing Rydberg states with different inter- and intra-species interaction strengths, the proposal provides a syndrome measurement fidelity of $\mathcal{F}>0.9999$ in less than 5 $\mu$s of integration time.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2024

Architecture for fast implementation of qLDPC codes with optimized Rydberg gates

We propose an implementation of bivariate bicycle codes (Nature {\bf 627}, 778 (2024)) based on long-range Rydberg gates between stationary neutral atom qubits. An optimized layout of data and ancilla qubits reduces the maximum Euclidean communication distance needed for non-local parity check operators. An optimized Rydberg gate pulse design enables $\sf CZ$ entangling operations with fidelity ${\mathcal F}>0.999$ at a distance greater than $12~\mu\rm m$. The combination of optimized layout and gate design leads to a quantum error correction cycle time of $\sim 1.28~\rm ms$ for a $[[144,12,12]]$ code, nearly a factor of two improvement over previous designs.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2023

Robust atom-photon gate for quantum information processing

We propose a scheme for two-qubit gates between a flying photon and an atom in a cavity. The atom-photon gate setup consists of a cavity and a Mach-Zehnder interferometer with doubly degenerate ground and excited state energy levels mediating the atom-light interaction. We provide an error analysis of the gate and model important errors, including spatial mode mismatch between the photon and the cavity, spontaneous emission, cavity losses, detunings, and random fluctuations of the cavity parameters and frequencies. Error analysis shows that the gate protocol is more robust against experimental errors compared to previous atom-photon gates and achieves higher fidelity.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2023

Enhanced Measurement of Neutral Atom Qubits with Machine Learning

We demonstrate qubit state measurements assisted by a supervised convolutional neural network (CNN) in a neutral atom quantum processor. We present two CNN architectures for analyzing neutral atom qubit readout data: a compact 5-layer single-qubit CNN architecture and a 6-layer multi-qubit CNN architecture. We benchmark both architectures against a conventional Gaussian threshold analysis method. In a sparse array (9 {\mu}m atom separation) which experiences negligible crosstalk, we observed up to 32% and 56% error reduction for the multi-qubit and single-qubit architectures respectively, as compared to the benchmark. In a tightly spaced array (5 {\mu}m atom separation), which suffers from readout crosstalk, we observed up to 43% and 32% error reduction in the multi-qubit and single-qubit CNN architectures respectively, as compared to the benchmark. By examining the correlation between the predicted states of neighboring qubits, we found that the multi-qubit CNN architecture reduces the crosstalk correlation up to 78.5%. This work demonstrates a proof of concept for a CNN network to be implemented as a real-time readout processing method on a neutral atom quantum computer, enabling faster readout time and improved fidelity.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2023

Benchmarking a Neutral-Atom Quantum Computer

In this study, we simulated the algorithmic performance of a small neutral atom quantum computer and compared its performance when operating with all-to-all versus nearest-neighbor connectivity. This comparison was made using a suite of algorithmic benchmarks developed by the Quantum Economic Development Consortium. Circuits were simulated with a noise model consistent with experimental data from Nature 604, 457 (2022). We find that all-to-all connectivity improves simulated circuit fidelity by $10\%-15\%$, compared to nearest-neighbor connectivity.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2023

Reducing Rydberg state dc polarizability by microwave dressing

We demonstrate reduction of the dc polarizability of Cesium atom Rydberg states in a 77 K environment utilizing microwave field dressing. In particular we reduce the polarizability of $52P_{3/2}$ states which have resonances at 5.35 GHz to $51D_{5/2}$, suitable for interfacing Rydberg atoms to superconducting resonators in a cryogenic environment. We measure the polarizability of the Rydberg states using Magneto-Optical-Trap (MOT) loss spectroscopy. Using an off-resonant radio-frequency (RF) dressing field coupling $52P_{3/2}$ and $51D_{5/2}$ we demonstrate a reduction in dc polarizability of the $ 52P_{3/2}$ states over 80$\%$. Experimental findings are in good agreement with a numerical model of the atom-dressing field system developed using the Shirley-Floquet formalism. We also demonstrate that the dc polarizability reduction is highly anisotropic, with near total nulling possible when the dc and dressing fields are aligned, but only a factor of two reduction in polarizability when the fields are orthogonal. These results may aid in stabilizing Rydberg resonances against varying dc fields present near surfaces, enabling advancement in the development of hybrid Rydberg atom - superconducting resonator quantum gates.

physics.atom-ph↗