A high optical access cryogenic system for Rydberg atom arrays with a 3000-second trap lifetime

TL;DR

This paper introduces a cryogenic optical tweezer system for Rydberg atom arrays achieving a 3000-second trap lifetime, enabling high-fidelity quantum operations with reduced environmental noise.

Contribution

It presents a novel cryogenic setup combining high optical access and long atom lifetime, improving control and coherence for Rydberg atom quantum computing.

Findings

Achieved 3000 s atom trap lifetime in cryogenic environment

Demonstrated ground-state qubit manipulation and Rydberg control

Reduced blackbody radiation enhances Rydberg state stability

Abstract

We present an optical tweezer array of $^{87}$Rb atoms housed in an cryogenic environment that successfully combines a 4 K cryopumping surface, a <50 K cold box surrounding the atoms, and a room-temperature high-numerical-aperture objective lens. We demonstrate a 3000 s atom trap lifetime, which enables us to optimize and measure losses at the $10^{-4}$ level that arise during imaging and cooling, which are important to array rearrangement. We perform both ground-state qubit manipulation with an integrated microwave antenna and two-photon coherent Rydberg control, with the local electric field tuned to zero via integrated electrodes. We anticipate that the reduced blackbody radiation at the atoms from the cryogenic environment, combined with future electrical shielding, should decrease the rate of undesired transitions to nearby strongly-interacting Rydberg states, which cause many-body loss and impede Rydberg gates. This low-vibration, high-optical-access cryogenic platform can be used with a wide range of optically trapped atomic or molecular species for applications in quantum computing, simulation, and metrology.