Design and construction of a quantum matter synthesizer

Abstract

The quantum matter synthesizer (QMS) is a new quantum simulation platform in which individual particles in a lattice can be resolved and re-arranged into arbitrary patterns. The ability to spatially manipulate ultracold atoms and control their tunneling and interactions at the single-particle level allows full control of a many-body quantum system. We present the design and characterization of the QMS, which integrates into a single ultra-stable apparatus a two-dimensional optical lattice, a moving optical tweezer array formed by a digital micromirror device, and site-resolved atomic imaging. We demonstrate excellent mechanical stability between the lattice and tweezer array with relative fluctuations below 10 nm, diffraction-limited imaging at a resolution of 655 nm, and high-speed real-time control of the tweezer array at a 2.52 kHz refresh rate, which will be adopted to realize fast rearrangement of atoms. The QMS also features new technologies and schemes, such as nanotextured anti-reflective windows and all-optical long-distance transport of atoms.

An atomic boson sampler

“…To explore alternative routes to improve the speed and quality of state preparation, we turn to tools that have been developed to rapidly image [33], optically cool [34][35][36][37], and deterministically rearrange individual atoms trapped in optical tweezers [38,39]. Using the tweezers to implant atoms in a tunnel-coupled optical lattice [40,41] allows for both fast state preparation (in hundreds of milliseconds), and the required dynamics for boson sampling. Moreover, the tweezers can be used to modify the lattice potential [41,42] to implement different non-interacting dynamics with low loss.…”