Demonstration of a neutral atom controlled-NOT quantum gate

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates a neutral atom-based CNOT quantum gate using Rydberg blockade, achieving fidelities around 0.73, and shows potential for scalable multi-qubit quantum computing.

Contribution

First experimental realization of a CNOT gate with neutral atoms utilizing Rydberg interactions, with fidelity measurements and entanglement demonstration.

Findings

CNOT fidelities of approximately 0.73 and 0.72

Gate can generate entangled two-atom states

Long-range Rydberg interactions are promising for multi-qubit systems

Abstract

We present the first demonstration of a CNOT gate using neutral atoms. Our implementation of the CNOT uses Rydberg blockade interactions between neutral atoms held in optical traps separated by >8 \mu\rm m. We measure CNOT fidelities of F=0.73 and 0.72 using two different gate protocols, and show by measurement of parity oscillations that the gate can be used to generate two-atom states with fidelity at the threshold for entanglement. We anticipate that the long range nature of the Rydberg interaction will be attractive for future extensions of this work to multi-qubit systems.