Active and Passive Control of Individual Atoms with Optical Cavities
Arrays of individually trapped atoms are a promising platform for quantum information processing. Recent progress in this field includes increasing array sizes to thousands of atoms, demonstrating logical quantum operations, and achieving two-qubit gate fidelity exceeding 99.5%. Despite these advances, utility-level atomic quantum processors are expected to require millions of qubits operating under rapid quantum error correction. Optical cavities provide a route to scaling atomic quantum processors while improving system performance.
In this talk, I describe the integration of an optical bow-tie cavity with an array of cesium atoms, enabling a variety of active and passive control techniques. Dispersive light-matter coupling allows fast, nondestructive measurements for observing individual atomic collisions, as well as feedback control of atom number and temperature. Tailored light-matter coupling further supports passive cavity cooling to the atomic ground state and directional control of photon emission through the geometric structure of an atom array or through chiral cavity coupling of a single atom. These works highlight the power of optical cavities for advancing neutral-atom quantum computing while opening new opportunities in fundamental studies of collective, many-body physics.
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