State-dependent optical lattices for the strontium optical qubit

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates state-dependent optical lattices for strontium's optical qubit, enabling independent control of qubit states and reducing inelastic collisions, which advances quantum simulation and computation.

Contribution

It introduces a method to trap excited state atoms independently at the tune-out wavelength, improving control over Sr optical qubits and addressing systematic errors in optical lattice clocks.

Findings

Successfully trapped excited state atoms with minimal effect on ground state atoms

Reduced inelastic excited state collisions by over four orders of magnitude

Identified discrepancies in atomic data affecting systematic error calibration

Abstract

We demonstrate state-dependent optical lattices for the Sr optical qubit at the tune-out wavelength for its ground state. We tightly trap excited state atoms while suppressing the effect of the lattice on ground state atoms by more than four orders of magnitude. This highly independent control over the qubit states removes inelastic excited state collisions as the main obstacle for quantum simulation and computation schemes based on the Sr optical qubit. Our results also reveal large discrepancies in the atomic data used to calibrate the largest systematic effect of Sr optical lattice clocks.