Spatially programmable spin interactions in neutral atom arrays

Abstract

Quantum simulators based on arrays of neutral atoms have proven to be among the most promising platforms to explore and solve non-trivial problems of complex strongly correlated many-body phenomena. This success is based on the optimally hardware-efficient analog implementation of the Hamiltonian under study. The drawback of this approach is the narrow range of problems addressable with any chosen architecture, which motivates the development of flexible programming techniques for analog simulators. We report on the realization of spatially programmable interactions for XYZ models implemented with neutral atoms in optical tweezers. We use multi-color near-resonant coupling to highly excited electronic states to induce spin-dependent interactions between atoms in atomic ground states. Van-der-Waals interactions between these Rydberg states lead to mixing between usually well-separated mj-sublevels. This opens up distance and angular-dependent programmable interaction channels, which we use to design spin-exchange and pairwise spin flips. Our results pave the way toward universally programmable spin arrays for analog quantum simulators.

Spin Squeezing by Rydberg Dressing in an Array of Atomic Ensembles

“…Prospective applications include clock comparisons for tests of fundamental physics [56], cascaded interrogation schemes for clocks limited by local oscillator noise [43,45], and quantum-enhanced imaging of magnetic [15,57] or electric [35] fields. The ability to access many-body entanglement by stroboscopic Rydberg dressing further promises to advance quantum simulations of lattice spin models that benefit from optical control of long-range interactions [27,46,[58][59][60][61].…”