Programmable entanglement on the strontium clock transition with Rydberg interactions

William J. Eckner, Aaron W. Young, Nathan Schine, Adam M. Kaufman
JILA, NIST, CU Boulder, USA

The controlled generation of useful entangled states represents a central mission in quantum science. Toward this end, we explore two avenues toward creating entanglement on the strontium optical-clock transition. First, we demonstrate a maximally entangling two-qubit gate based on dressed-Rydberg interactions. In combination with high-fidelity, global single-qubit rotations, this work opens the door to digital quantum algorithms, which can then be used to explore metrologically useful states. Additionally, we study Rydberg interactions among many atoms. Rydberg dressing naturally provides a finite-range one-axis-twisting Hamiltonian, which generates spin-squeezed states, a proven resource in enhanced quantum sensing, but one which has only recently been studied on optical clock transitions. In future work, we also plan to use Rydberg interactions to explore transverse-field Ising model dynamics in two dimensions, as well as the interacting many-body models that emerge in resonantly driven Rydberg systems.