arXiv subjects

Yoav Sagi

Publications and source records attributed to Yoav Sagi.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Motional refocusing for trap-off Rydberg gates

Rydberg entangling gates in optical-tweezer arrays are commonly executed with the trapping light switched off, so every gate contains a release--and--recapture cycle that heats the atomic motion and can ultimately limit circuit depth. We develop a motional refocusing protocol that exactly removes this heating in the harmonic approximation using only programmable intensity switching of the trapping light. The protocol closes the release--and--recapture cycle for every matched harmonic mode, returning arbitrary motional populations and coherences exactly up to ordinary evolution under the static trap. We derive the recovery sequence in closed form for arbitrary catch depth and prove that, within the experimentally relevant regime, it is the unique globally time-optimal solution under bounded trap intensity. The harmonic theory is then extended in two directions. First, we construct exact common-intensity recovery sequences that simultaneously refocus several nondegenerate harmonic modes, including radial--axial and fully anisotropic three-dimensional traps. Second, we derive a composite sequence that suppresses the leading anharmonic correction of weakly anharmonic traps by canceling all first-order motional transitions induced by the quartic anharmonicity, changing the residual heating law from $U_0^{-2}$ to $U_0^{-4}$. Wave-packet simulations in realistic Gaussian tweezers validate the analytic theory and quantify the residual effects of anharmonicity, finite switching ramps, trap ellipticity, and control errors. Applied to representative cesium Rydberg gates, the protocol suppresses the dominant recapture heating to the anharmonic floor and prevents the associated motional Doppler contribution from increasing with circuit depth. The resulting framework provides a practical route toward heating-free trap-off neutral-atom gates using only trap-intensity modulation.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2026

Experimental Determination of the $D1$ Magic Wavelength for $^{40}$K

Neutral-atom arrays offer a promising path for quantum simulation, yet the potential of fermionic $^{40}$K remains largely constrained by state-dependent light shifts that degrade cooling and detection fidelities. This problem can be resolved by working at a magic wavelength, where the differential light shift vanishes. We report the first experimental determination of the magic wavelength for the D1 transition in fermionic $^{40}$K at 1227.54(4) nm. Using in-trap loss spectroscopy in a wavelength-tunable optical tweezer, we map the differential AC Stark shift across a range of trapping powers and wavelengths. By converting these shifts to differential scalar polarizabilities, we find excellent agreement with relativistic all-order calculations. Benchmark measurements at 1064.49 nm further quantify the intensity-sampling systematics inherent to standard trapping wavelengths, contrasting with the ``mechanically clean'' environment provided by the magic condition. Our results provide an important step toward high-fidelity in-trap D1 cooling, fluorescence imaging, and light-assisted loading, establishing a robust path toward scaling fermionic neutral-atom arrays for quantum information science.

physics.atom-ph↗

arXiv2025

Fast collisional $\sqrt{\mathrm{SWAP}}$ gate for fermionic atoms in an optical superlattice

Collisional gates in optical superlattices have recently achieved record fidelities, but their operation times are typically limited by tunneling. Here we propose and analyze an alternative route to a fast $\sqrt{\mathrm{SWAP}}$ gate for two fermionic atoms in an optical superlattice based on optimized, time-dependent control of the short and long lattice depths. The gate is implemented by transiently releasing the atoms into a quasi-harmonic confinement centered between the two sites. With an appropriately chosen contact interaction strength, a controlled collision accumulates the exchange phase required for $\sqrt{\mathrm{SWAP}}$ and generates entanglement. We employ a continuum, time-dependent Schr\"odinger-equation simulation that goes beyond a two-site Fermi--Hubbard description and benchmark it against experimentally implemented tunneling-based protocols, reproducing the observed single-particle tunneling and spin-exchange dynamics. For experimentally accessible lattice depths, we find that the proposed gate operates in $\sim 21\,\mu\mathrm{s}$, more than an order of magnitude faster than tunneling-based implementations, while achieving fidelities $\gtrsim 99\%$. We further analyze sensitivity to lattice-depth variations and show that a composite sequence improves robustness. Our results establish fast, collision-mediated entangling gates in superlattices as a promising building block for scalable neutral-atom quantum computation.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2024

Tweezer interferometry with NOON states

Atomic interferometers measure phase differences along paths with exceptional precision. Tweezer interferometry represents a novel approach for this measurement by guiding particles along predefined trajectories. This study explores the feasibility of using condensed bosons in tweezer interferometry. Unlike the factor $\sqrt{N}$ enhancement expected with classical ensembles, using NOON state interferometry can yield an enhancement by a factor of $N$. We consider a protocol for a tweezer-based NOON state interferometer that includes adiabatic splitting and merging of condensed bosons, followed by adiabatic branching for phase encoding. Our theoretical analysis focuses on the conditions necessary to achieve adiabaticity and avoid spontaneous symmetry breaking. Additionally, we demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed scheme and estimate the time required to perform these sweep processes.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2024

Atomic clock interferometry using optical tweezers

Clock interferometry refers to the coherent splitting of a clock into two different paths and recombining in a way that reveals the proper time difference between them. Unlike the comparison of two separate clocks, this approach allows testing how non-flat spacetime influences quantum coherence. Atomic clocks are currently the most accurate time keeping devices. Here we propose using optical tweezers to implement clock interferometry. Our proposed clock interferometer employs an alkaline-earth-like atom held in an optical trap at the magic wavelength. Through a combination of adiabatic, tweezer-based, splitting and recombining schemes and a modified Ramsey sequence on the clock states, we achieve a linear sensitivity to the gravitational time dilation. Moreover, the measurement of the time dilation is insensitive to relative fluctuations in the intensity of the tweezer beams. We analyze the tweezer clock interferometer and show that it is feasible with current technological capabilities. The proposed interferometer could test the effect of gravitational redshift on quantum coherence, and implement the quantum twin paradox.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2023

Atomic interferometer based on optical tweezers

Atomic interferometers measure forces and acceleration with exceptional precision. The conventional approach to atomic interferometry is to launch an atomic cloud into a ballistic trajectory and perform the wave-packet splitting in momentum space by Raman transitions. This places severe constraints on the possible atomic trajectory, positioning accuracy and probing duration. Here, we propose and analyze a novel atomic interferometer that uses micro-optical traps (optical tweezers) to manipulate and control the motion of atoms. The new interferometer allows long probing time, sub micrometer positioning accuracy, and utmost flexibility in shaping of the atomic trajectory. The cornerstone of the tweezer interferometer are the coherent atomic splitting and combining schemes. We present two adiabatic schemes with two or three tweezers that are robust to experimental imperfections and work simultaneously with many vibrational states. The latter property allows for multi-atom interferometry in a single run. We also highlight the advantage of using fermionic atoms to obtain single-atom occupation of vibrational states and to eliminate mean-field shifts. We examine the impact of tweezer intensity noise and demonstrate that, when constrained by shot noise, the interferometer can achieve a relative accuracy better than $10^{-11}$ in measuring Earth's gravitational acceleration. The sub-micrometer resolution and extended measurement duration offer promising opportunities for exploring fundamental physical laws in new regimes. We discuss two applications well-suited for the unique capabilities of the tweezer interferometer: the measurement of gravitational forces and the study of Casimir-Polder forces between atoms and surfaces. Crucially, our proposed tweezer interferometer is within the reach of current technological capabilities.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2023

Spatial adiabatic passage of ultracold atoms in optical tweezers

Spatial adiabatic passage (SAP) is a process that facilitates the transfer of a wave packet between two localized modes that are not directly coupled, but rather interact through an intermediate third mode. By employing a counter-intuitive adiabatic pulse sequence, this technique achieves minimal population in the intermediate state and high transfer efficiency. Here, we report the implementation of SAP for transferring massive particles between three micro-optical traps. We begin by preparing ultracold fermionic atoms in low vibrational eigenstates of one trap and then manipulate the distance between the three traps to execute the SAP protocol. We observe a smooth transfer of atoms between the two outer traps, accompanied by a low population in the central trap. We validate our findings and underscore the significance of the counter-intuitive sequence by reversing the order of the pulse sequence. Additionally, we investigate the influence of the tunneling rate and the time delay between the motion of the two external tweezers on the fidelity of the process. Our results open up new possibilities for advanced control and manipulation schemes in optical tweezer array platforms.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2022

Phase Retrieval of Vortices in Bose-Einstein Condensates

We propose and demonstrate numerically a measurement scheme for complete reconstruction of the 2D quantum wave function of a Bose-Einstein condensate, amplitude and phase, from a time-of-flight measurement. We identify a fundamental ambiguity present in the measurement of phase structures of high-symmetry excitations (e.g., vortices) and show how to overcome it by allowing for different expansion durations in different directions. We demonstrate this approach with the reconstruction of matter-wave vortices and arrays of vortices.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2022

Degenerate Raman sideband cooling of 40K atoms

We report on the implementation of degenerate Raman sideband cooling of $^{40}$K atoms. The scheme incorporates a 3D optical lattice, which confines the atoms and drives the Raman transitions. The optical cooling cycle is closed by two optical pumping beams. The wavelength of the laser beams forming the lattice is close to the D$_2$ atomic transition, while the optical pumping is operated near the D$_1$ transition. With this cooling method, we achieve temperature of $\sim$$1\mu$K of a cloud with $\sim$$10^7$ atoms. This corresponds to a phase space density of $\ge$$10^{-3}$. Moreover, the fermionic ensemble is spin polarized to conditions which are favorable for subsequent evaporative cooling. We study the dependence of the cooling scheme on several parameters, including the applied magnetic field, the detuning, duration, and intensity profile of the optical pumping beams. Adding this optical cooling stage to current Fermi gas experiments can improve the final conditions and increase the data rate.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2022

Quantum Speed Limit for States with a Bounded Energy Spectrum

Quantum speed limits set the maximal pace of state evolution. Two well-known limits exist for a unitary time-independent Hamiltonian: the Mandelstam-Tamm and Margolus-Levitin bounds. The former restricts the rate according to the state energy uncertainty, while the latter depends on the mean energy relative to the ground state. Here we report on an additional bound that exists for states with a bounded energy spectrum. This bound is dual to the Margolus-Levitin one in the sense that it depends on the difference between the state's mean energy and the energy of the highest occupied eigenstate. Each of the three bounds can become the most restrictive one, depending on the spread and mean of the energy, forming three dynamical regimes which are accessible in a multi-level system. The new bound is relevant for quantum information applications, since in most of them, information is stored and manipulated in a Hilbert space with a bounded energy spectrum.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2021

Observing crossover between quantum speed limits

Quantum mechanics sets fundamental limits on how fast quantum states can be transformed in time. Two well-known quantum speed limits are the Mandelstam-Tamm and the Margolus-Levitin bounds, which relate the maximum speed of evolution to the system's energy uncertainty and mean energy, respectively. Here, we test concurrently both limits in a multi-level system by following the motion of a single atom in an optical trap using fast matter wave interferometry. Our data reveal two different regimes: one where the Mandelstam-Tamm limit constrains the evolution at all times, and a second where a crossover to the Margolus-Levitin limit is manifested at longer times. We take a geometric approach to quantify the deviation from the speed limit, measuring how much the matter wave's quantum evolution deviates from the geodesic path in the Hilbert space of the multi-level system. Our results, establishing quantum speed limits beyond the simple two-level system, are important to understand the ultimate performance of quantum computing devices and related advanced quantum technologies.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2021

Absence of heating in a uniform Fermi gas created by periodic driving

Ultracold atomic gas provides a useful tool to explore many-body physics. One of the recent additions to this experimental toolbox is the Floquet engineering, where periodic modulation of the Hamiltonian allows the creation of effective potentials that do not exist otherwise. When subject to external modulations, however, generic interacting many-body systems absorb energy, thus posing a heating problem that may impair the usefulness of this method. For discrete systems with bounded local energy, an exponentially suppressed heating rate with the driving frequency has been observed previously, leaving the system in a prethermal state for exceedingly long durations. But for systems in continuous space, the situation remains unclear. Here we show that Floquet engineering can be employed to a strongly interacting degenerate Fermi gas held in a flat box-like potential without inducing excessive heating on experimentally relevant timescales. The driving eliminates the effect of a spin-dependent potential originating from a simultaneous magnetic levitation of two different spin states. We calculate the heating rate and obtain a power-law suppression with the drive frequency. To further test the many-body behavior of the driven gas, we measure both the pair-condensation fraction at unitarity and the contact parameter across the BEC-BCS crossover. At low driving frequencies, the condensate fraction is reduced by the time-dependent force, but at higher frequencies, it revives and attains an even higher value than without driving. Our results are promising for future exploration of exotic many-body phases of a bulk strongly-interacting Fermi gas with dynamically engineered Hamiltonians.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2020

Observation of a smooth polaron-molecule transition in a degenerate Fermi gas

Understanding the behavior of an impurity strongly interacting with a Fermi sea is a long-standing challenge in many-body physics. When the interactions are short-ranged, two vastly different ground states exist: a polaron quasiparticle and a molecule dressed by the majority atoms. In the single-impurity limit, it is predicted that at a critical interaction strength, a first-order transition occurs between these two states. Experiments, however, are always conducted in the finite temperature and impurity density regime. The fate of the polaron-to-molecule transition under these conditions, where the statistics of quantum impurities and thermal effects become relevant, is still unknown. Here, we address this question experimentally and theoretically. Our experiments are performed with a spin-imbalanced ultracold Fermi gas with tunable interactions. Utilizing a novel Raman spectroscopy combined with a high-sensitivity fluorescence detection technique, we isolate the quasiparticle contribution and extract the polaron energy, spectral weight, and the contact parameter. As the interaction strength is increased, we observe a continuous variation of all observables, in particular a smooth reduction of the quasiparticle weight as it goes to zero beyond the transition point. Our observation is in good agreement with a theoretical model where polaron and molecule quasiparticle states are thermally occupied according to their quantum statistics. At the experimental conditions, polaron states are hence populated even at interactions where the molecule is the ground state and vice versa. The emerging physical picture is thus that of a smooth transition between polarons and molecules and a coexistence of both in the region around the expected transition.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2020

Fast universal two-qubit gate for neutral fermionic atoms in optical tweezers

An array of ultracold neutral atoms held in optical micro-traps is a promising platform for quantum computation. One of the major bottlenecks of this platform is the weak coupling strength between adjacent atoms, which limits the speed of two-qubit gates. Here, we present a method to perform a fast universal square-root-SWAP gate with fermionic atoms. The basic idea of the gate is to release the atoms into a harmonic potential positioned in between the two atoms. By properly tailoring the interaction parameter, the collision process between the atoms generates entanglement and yields the desired gate. We prove analytically that in the limit of broad atomic wave-packets, the fidelity of the gate approaches unity. We demonstrate numerically that with typical experimental parameters, our gate can operate on a microsecond timescale and achieves a fidelity higher than 0.998. Moreover, the gate duration is independent of the initial distance between the atoms. A gate with such features is an important milestone towards all-to-all connectivity and fault tolerance in quantum computation with neutral atoms.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2020

Sub-wavelength spin excitations in ultracold gases created by stimulated Raman transitions

Raman transitions are used in quantum simulations with ultracold atoms for cooling, spectroscopy and creation of artificial gauge fields. Spatial shaping of the Raman fields allows local control of the effective Rabi frequency, which can be mapped to the atomic spin. Evanescent Raman fields are of special interest as they can provide a new degree of control emanating from their rapidly decaying profile and for their ability to generate features below the diffraction limit. This opens the door to the formation of sub-wavelength spin textures. In this work, we present a theoretical and numerical study of Raman Rabi frequency in the presence of evanescent driving fields. We show how spin textures can be created by spatially varying driving fields and demonstrate a skyrmionium lattice - a periodic array of topological spin excitations, each of which is composed of two skyrmions with opposite topological charges. Our results pave the way to quantum simulation of spin excitation dynamics in magnetic materials, especially of itinerant spin models.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2020

Single-exposure absorption imaging of ultracold atoms using deep learning

Absorption imaging is the most common probing technique in experiments with ultracold atoms. The standard procedure involves the division of two frames acquired at successive exposures, one with the atomic absorption signal and one without. A well-known problem is the presence of residual structured noise in the final image, due to small differences between the imaging light in the two exposures. Here we solve this problem by performing absorption imaging with only a single exposure, where instead of a second exposure the reference frame is generated by an unsupervised image-completion autoencoder neural network. The network is trained on images without absorption signal such that it can infer the noise overlaying the atomic signal based only on the information in the region encircling the signal. We demonstrate our approach on data captured with a quantum degenerate Fermi gas. The average residual noise in the resulting images is below that of the standard double-shot technique. Our method simplifies the experimental sequence, reduces the hardware requirements, and can improve the accuracy of extracted physical observables. The trained network and its generating scripts are available as an open-source repository (http://absDL.github.io/).

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2019

In Situ Momentum Distribution Measurement of a Quantum Degenerate Fermi Gas using Raman Spectroscopy

The ability to directly measure the momentum distribution of quantum gases is both unique to these systems and pivotal in extracting many other important observables. Here we use Raman transitions to measure the momentum distribution of a weakly-interacting Fermi gas in a harmonic trap. For narrow atomic dispersions, momentum and energy conservation imply a linear relation between the two-photon detuning and the atomic momentum. We detect the number of atoms transferred by the Raman beams using sensitive fluorescence detection in a magneto-optical trap. We employ this technique to a degenerate weakly-interacting Fermi gas at different temperatures. The measured momentum distributions match theoretical curves over two decades, and the extracted temperatures are in very good agreement with the ones obtained from a conventional time-of-flight technique. The main advantages of our measurement scheme are that it can be spatially selective and applied to a trapped gas, it can be completed in a relatively short time, and due to its high sensitivity, it can be used with very small clouds.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2018

Realistic Shortcuts to Adiabaticity in Optical Transfer

Shortcuts to adiabaticity (STA) are techniques allowing rapid variation of the system Hamiltonian without inducing excess heating. Fast optical transfer of atoms between different locations is a prime example of an STA application. We show that the boundary conditions on the atomic position, which are imposed to find the STA trajectory, lead to highly non-practical boundary conditions for the optical trap. Our experimental results demonstrate that, as a result, previously suggested STA trajectories generally do not perform well. We develop and demonstrate two complementary methods that solve the boundary conditions problem and allow the construction of realistic and flexible STA movements. Our technique can also account for non-harmonic terms in the confining potential.

quant-ph↗