Physics Colloquium: “Quantum computing with neutral ytterbium atoms” with Professor Jeff Thompson, Princeton University

Quantum computing with neutral atoms has progressed rapidly in recent years, combining large system sizes, flexible and dynamic connectivity, and quickly improving gate fidelities. The pioneering work in this field has been implemented using alkali atoms, primarily rubidium and cesium. However, divalent, alkalineearth-like atoms such as ytterbium offer significant technical advantages. In this talk, I will present our progress on quantum computing using 171- Yb atoms, including high-fidelity imaging, nuclear spin qubits with extremely long coherence times, and two-qubit gates on nuclear spins using Rydberg states [1,2]. I will also discuss several unexpected benefits of alkaline-earth-atoms: an extremely robust and power-efficient local gate addressing scheme [3], and a novel approach to quantum error correction called “erasure conversion”, which has the potential to implement the surface code with a threshold exceeding 4%, using the unique level structure of 171-Yb to convert spontaneous emission events into erasure errors [4].