Photon-recoil and laser-focusing limits to Rydberg gate fidelity

Quantum mechanics allows for many-particle wavefunctions that cannot be factorized into a product of single-particle wavefunctions, even when the constituent particles are entirely distinct. Such 'entangled' states explicitly demonstrate the non-local character of quantum theory, having potential applications in high-precision spectroscopy, quantum communication, cryptography and computation. In general, the more particles that can be entangled, the more clearly nonclassical effects are exhibited--and the more useful the states are for quantum applications. Here we implement a recently proposed entanglement technique to generate entangled states of two and four trapped ions. Coupling between the ions is provided through their collective motional degrees of freedom, but actual motional excitation is minimized. Entanglement is achieved using a single laser pulse, and the method can in principle be applied to any number of ions.

Large arrays of individually controlled atoms trapped in optical tweezers are a very promising platform for quantum engineering applications. However, deterministic loading of the traps is experimentally challenging. We demonstrate the preparation of fully loaded two-dimensional arrays of up to ~50 microtraps, each containing a single atom and arranged in arbitrary geometries. Starting from initially larger, half-filled matrices of randomly loaded traps, we obtain user-defined target arrays at unit filling. This is achieved with a real-time control system and a moving optical tweezers, which together enable a sequence of rapid atom moves depending on the initial distribution of the atoms in the arrays. These results open exciting prospects for quantum engineering with neutral atoms in tunable two-dimensional geometries.