Title: Quantum science with Rydberg atoms, from one to many

Abstract:
Quantum science promises great potential to revolutionize our current technologies. Arrays of individual atoms trapped in optical tweezers have emerged as an attractive architecture for quantum computation and simulation. This architecture has demonstrated great advantages in scalability, and programmability over the array configurations. Controllable inter-atomic interactions are achieved via the Rydberg states of atoms, which facilitate two-qubit gate operations and to simulate quantum many-body systems. However, a long-standing challenge is the readout of Rydberg atoms, which is often a destructive process, precluding qubit reuse and the application of many quantum error-correcting protocols.

To address these challenges, my postdoc work at MIT took an alternative approach based on arrays of atomic ensembles. By harnessing the collective optical response of the atomic ensemble, we demonstrate a rapid preparation, manipulation, and non-demolish readout of a single Rydberg qubit embedded in an atomic ensemble. Scaling up the system towards large arrays of atomic ensembles have been achieved with apparatus upgrade, and preliminary results have demonstrated fast, parallel qubit readout. At the end of this talk, I will outline my proposed research at ETH, which aims for building a novel architecture for quantum computation/simulation with dual type dual-element atom arrays. I expect this architecture can mitigate some long-standing challenges, including individual addressability and non-demolish selective detection.