Long-lived giant circular Rydberg atoms at room temperature

TL;DR

This paper reports the creation of long-lived circular Rydberg atoms at room temperature with lifetimes exceeding 10 milliseconds, enabled by Purcell suppression, opening new avenues for quantum computing and sensing.

Contribution

It demonstrates the first trapping and coherent control of circular Rydberg atoms with lifetimes over 10 ms at room temperature, significantly surpassing previous low angular momentum states.

Findings

Achieved >10 ms lifetime for circular Rydberg atoms at room temperature.

Successfully controlled Rydberg levels up to principal quantum number n=103.

Observed tweezer trapping of Rydberg atoms on the hundreds of millisecond timescale.

Abstract

Stability achieved by large angular momentum is ubiquitous in nature, with examples ranging from classical mechanics, over optics and chemistry, to nuclear physics. In atoms, angular momentum can protect excited electronic orbitals from decay due to selection rules. This manifests spectacularly in highly excited Rydberg states. Low angular momentum Rydberg states are at the heart of recent breakthroughs in quantum computing, simulation and sensing with neutral atoms. For these applications the lifetime of the Rydberg levels sets fundamental limits for gate fidelities, coherence times, or spectroscopic precision. The quest for longer Rydberg state lifetimes has motivated the generation, coherent control and trapping of circular Rydberg atoms, which are characterized by the maximally allowed electron orbital momentum and were key to Nobel prize-winning experiments with single atoms and photons. Here, we report the observation of individually trapped circular Rydberg atoms with lifetimes of more than 10 milliseconds, two orders of magnitude longer-lived than the established low angular momentum orbitals. This is achieved via Purcell suppression of blackbody modes at room temperature. We coherently control individual circular Rydberg levels at so far elusive principal quantum numbers of up to $n=103$, and observe tweezer trapping of the Rydberg atoms on the few hundred millisecond scale. Our results pave the way for quantum information processing and sensing utilizing the combination of extreme lifetimes and giant Rydberg blockade.