A general approach to state-dependent optical tweezer traps for polar molecules

TL;DR

This paper presents a versatile method for creating state-dependent optical tweezer traps for polar molecules, enabling enhanced dipole interactions and two-qubit gates, applicable to various molecular species.

Contribution

It introduces a general approach leveraging the tensor ac Stark shift to produce state-dependent potentials for polar molecules, facilitating quantum gate operations.

Findings

Method enables trapping molecules with sub-wavelength separation.

Applicable to broad classes of molecules including bialkali and laser-cooled species.

Supports implementation of two-qubit quantum gates.

Abstract

State-dependent optical tweezers can be used to trap a pair of molecules with a separation much smaller than the wavelength of the trapping light, greatly enhancing the dipole-dipole interaction between them. Here we describe a general approach to producing these state-dependent potentials using the tensor part of the ac Stark shift and show how it can be used to carry out two-qubit gates between pairs of molecules. The method is applicable to broad classes of molecules including bialkali molecules produced by atom association and those amenable to direct laser cooling.