Scientists master light-based control of rare-earth atoms for quantum computing
Researchers have demonstrated precise control of erbium atoms using laser light, solving a long-standing challenge in quantum information technology. The breakthrough could accelerate development of practical quantum computers and sensors by making it easier to prepare and manipulate the atomic building blocks that store quantum data.
Originaltitel: Light-assisted collisions in tweezer-trapped lanthanides
We present a quantitative investigation of one- and two-body light-mediated processes that occur to few erbium atoms in an optical tweezer, when exposed to near-resonant light. In order to study the intertwined effects of recoil heating, cooling, and light-assisted collisions, we develop a first-principles Monte Carlo algorithm that solves the coupled dynamics of both the internal and external degrees of freedom of the atoms. After validating our theoretical model against experimental data, we use the predictive power of our code to guide our experiment and, in particular, we explore the performance of different transitions of erbium for light-assisted collisions in terms of their efficiency and fidelity for single-atom preparation.