2025-05-22 カリフォルニア工科大学（Caltech）
Two atoms, trapped by beams of laser light, are shown in a special quantum state called hyper-entanglement. In this state, both their motion and internal energy are linked, opening new possibilities for quantum technologies.Credit: AI-generated image by Manuel Endres
＜関連情報＞
- https://www.caltech.edu/about/news/controlling-quantum-motion-and-hyper-entanglement
- https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adn2618
光ピンセットにおける消去冷却、制御、運動のハイプレンタングルメント Erasure cooling, control, and hyperentanglement of motion in optical tweezers
Adam L. Shaw, Pascal Scholl, Ran Finkelstein, Richard Bing-Shiun Tsai, […] , and Manuel Endres
Science Published:22 May 2025
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1126/science.adn2618
Editor’s summary
Atoms trapped in optical tweezers are a promising platform for quantum information processing. Typically in such systems, quantum information is encoded in the atoms’ electronic or nuclear states. However, their motional states, which are more robust to environmental effects, could also be exploited for quantum information. Shaw et al. have demonstrated this approach using an array of optical tweezers filled with strontium atoms. The researchers first cooled the atoms to their motional ground state with high fidelity and then went on create a Bell state in both motional and electronic degrees of freedom, which is known as hyperentanglement. —Jelena Stajic
Abstract
Coherently controlling the motion of single atoms in optical tweezers would enable new applications in quantum information science. To demonstrate this, we first prepared atoms in their motional ground state using a species-agnostic cooling mechanism that converts motional excitations into erasures, errors with a known location. This cooling mechanism fundamentally outperforms idealized traditional sideband cooling, which we experimentally demonstrated. By coherently manipulating the resultant pure motional state, we performed mid-circuit readout and mid-circuit erasure detection through local shelving into motional superposition states. We lastly entangled the motion of two atoms in separate tweezers and generated hyperentanglement by preparing a simultaneous Bell state of motional and optical qubits, unlocking a large class of quantum operations with neutral atoms.
