Engineering controllable, strongly interacting many-body quantum systems is at the frontier of quantum simulation and quantum information processing. Arrays of laser-cooled neutral atoms in optical tweezers have emerged as a promising platform, because of their flexibility and the potential for strong interactions via Rydberg states. Existing neutral atom array experiments utilize alkali atoms, but alkaline-earth atoms offer many advantages in terms of coherence and control, and also open the door to new applications in precision measurement and timekeeping. In this work, we present a technique to trap individual alkaline-earth-like Ytterbium (Yb) atoms in optical tweezer arrays. The narrow 1 S0 -3 P1 intercombination line is used for both cooling and imaging in a magicwavelength optical tweezer at 532 nm. The low Doppler temperature allows for imaging near the saturation intensity, resulting in a very high atom detection fidelity. We demonstrate the imaging fidelity concretely by observing rare (< 1 in 10 4 images) spontaneous quantum jumps into and out of a metastable state. We also demonstrate stochastic loading of atoms into a two-dimensional, 144site tweezer array. This platform will enable advances in quantum information processing, quantum simulation and precision measurement. The demonstrated narrow-line Doppler imaging may also be applied in tweezer arrays or quantum gas microscopes using other atoms with similar transitions, such as Erbium and Dysprosium.Neutral atom arrays are an emerging platform for quantum simulation and quantum information processing. The use of individual optical tweezers [1] to trap atoms offers unprecedented control for bottom-up assembly of large-scale quantum systems, while interactions and entanglement can be realized through collisions [2], Rydberg states [2-8], optical cavities [9] or the formation of molecules [10]. Crucially, the entropy associated with stochastic loading from a magneto-optical trap can be eliminated using rapid imaging, feedback and rearrangement of the atoms' positions [11], allowing for uniform filling of large 1D [12], 2D [13,14] and 3D [15,16] arrays. In recent years, these systems have been used to probe many-body quantum dynamics [7, 8] engineer multi-qubit gates, and prepare entangled states [2,[4][5][6].All experiments to date involving optical tweezers have utilized alkali atoms, in particular Rb [1,2,4,[12][13][14]16], Cs [6,10,17] and Na [10,17]. However, alkaline earth atoms offer several intriguing advantages [18] including ultra-long coherence for nuclear spins in the J = 0 electronic ground state, a combination of strong and narrow optical transitions for rapid laser cooling to very low temperatures, and metastable shelving states to facilitate high-fidelity qubit readout. Interaction between nuclear spin qubits can be realized using Rydberg states (which feature strong hyperfine coupling in alkaline earth atoms [19,20]) or coherent spin-exchange collisions using the metastable clock state [21][22][23][24]. Furthermore, Rydberg states may...
Neutral atom qubits with Rydberg-mediated interactions are a leading platform for developing large-scale coherent quantum systems. In the majority of experiments to date, the Rydberg states are not trapped by the same potential that confines ground state atoms, resulting in atom loss and constraints on the achievable interaction time. In this work, we demonstrate that the Rydberg states of an alkaline earth atom, ytterbium, can be stably trapped by the same red-detuned optical tweezer that also confines the ground state, by leveraging the polarizability of the Yb + ion core. Using the previously unobserved 3 S1 series, we demonstrate trapped Rydberg atom lifetimes exceeding 100 µs, and observe no evidence of auto-or photo-ionization from the trap light for these states. We measure a coherence time of T2 = 59 µs between two Rydberg levels, exceeding the 28 µs lifetime of untrapped Rydberg atoms under the same conditions. These results are promising for extending the interaction time of Rydberg atom arrays for quantum simulation and computing, and are vital to capitalize on the extended Rydberg lifetimes in circular states or cryogenic environments.
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