A full-stack Quantum Computing Platform based on Trapped Neutral Rydberg Atoms

The Neutral Atom KAT-1 collaboration is realising an implementation of a full-stack hybrid quantum computer. At its core is a quantum processor with qubits based on neutral atoms confined in optical tweezers.These qubits can be entangled through long-range interactions enabled by exciting the atoms to high-lying Rydberg states. Currently two such setups are in development in Eindhoven, one based on 88Sr and the other based on 85Rb atoms.
Here, we report on the latest progress of the rubidium based setup, where the qubit states are encoded in the hyperfine splitting of the Rb ground state. Using microwave excitation we drive Rabi oscillations between the
qubit states and by applying a Stark-shifting laser beam it is possible to manipulate the phase evolution of the individual atoms and prepare arbitrary superpositions of the qubit states on each atom separately.
For the next step, two-photon excitation will be used to couple the qubit |1⟩ state to a highly excited Rybderg level, thereby enabling the interaction between the qubits and allowing entangling operations. With these tools,
a proof-of-principle implementation of this hybrid quantum computer can be offered as an online platform for external users. A major advantage of this tweezer-based platform is that scaling the number of qubits by an
order of magnitude should be a relatively straight-forward excercise, by progressing to ever larger tweezer arrays, as recently shown by several other groups [?, ?].