An atom-by-atom assembler of defect-free arbitrary two-dimensional atomic arrays

By D. Barredo, S. de Léséleuc, Vincent Lienhard, Thierry Lahaye, Antoine Browaeys. Science, 2016

844 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Making perfect atomic arrays Arrays of atoms can be a useful resource for quantum information. However, loading atoms into arrays is typically a stochastic process, which leads to imperfections. Two groups have now performed defect-free assembly of atoms into arrays (see the Perspective by Regal). The researchers first loaded the atoms stochastically and imaged the system. They then shuttled the atoms around to form perfect arrays. Barredo et al. worked with two-dimensional arrays, creating a variety of spatial configurations. Endres et al. manipulated atoms along a line. By further cooling down the atoms and generating interactions among them, the techniques may also find use in quantum simulation. Science, this issue p. 972, p. 1021; see also p. 1024 Two-dimensional arrays of arbitrary geometries are deterministically loaded with around 50 atoms. 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.

Subfields: Artificial Intelligence, Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/86211d08549c208ad8ba1464a1f98c7d94ebc9e1

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Citations in the corpus

Logical quantum processor based on reconfigurable atom arrays (2023, methodology): “…inside a glass vacuum cell, which are then loaded stochastically into programmable, static arrangements of 852-nm traps generated with a SLM and rearranged with a set of 850-nm moving traps generated by a pair of crossed AODs (DTSX-400, AA Opto-Electronic) to realize defect-free arrays 30,31,62 .”
Quantum matter built from nanoscopic lattices of atoms and photons (2018, methodology): “To form a large atomic lattice, a moving “sorter” beam (Barredo et al., 2016) or a reconfigurable tweezer array (Endres et al., 2016) may be implemented as both schemes have successfully achieved large defect-free lattices in free space.”
Ytterbium Nuclear-Spin Qubits in an Optical Tweezer Array (2021, background): “However, the required time and success probability of reaching a defect-free array scales adversely with the number of atoms to be moved [48, 49, 61].”
Probing many-body dynamics on a 51-atom quantum simulator (2017, methodology): “acousto-optic deflector directly or by creating a static two-dimensional lattice of traps and sorting atoms with an independent acousto-optic deflector, as demonstrated recently [25].”
Midcircuit Operations Using the omg Architecture in Neutral Atom Arrays (2023, methodology): “By subsequently focusing the beam through a 0.6-NA microscope objective, the phase information is translated into an intensity pattern of our choice ( 2 × 24 tweezer array for these experiments) [46,47].”