Description
Lanthanide atoms provide a rich platform for a number of ultracold atom experiments due to their variety of available optical transitions, strong anisotropic interactions and the large spin space of their fermionic ground states [1]. Leveraging these properties alongside the large, programmable defect-free arrays of qubits that can be realised using optical tweezer arrays of Rydberg atoms promise to provide exciting systems for quantum simulation. Recent works using ytterbium have already demonstrated an enhanced tweezer loading scheme [2] and indicated that trapping Rydberg states is possible [3].
We present our progress in implementing a quantum simulator utilising Rydberg states of erbium trapped in an optical tweezer array. We have already identified approximately 550 states in the erbium Rydberg series including a possible state from the $ng$ series to which excitation is only possible due to the incompletely filled erbium $f$-shell [4]. Within our system the large 7/2 nuclear spin of the fermionic $^{167}\,$Er isotope will allow us to implement computational schemes involving up to 8-level qudit states. Additionally, we expect to find a large range of trappable erbium Rydberg states in our optical tweezers.
[1] M. A. Norcia and F. Ferlaino, Nature Physics 17, 1349-1357 (2021).
[2] A. Jenkins et al., Phys. Rev. X 12, 021037 (2022).
[3] J. T. Wilson et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 128, 033201 (2022).
[4] A. Trautmann et al., Phys. Rev. X 3, 033165 (2021).
| Presenter name | Samuel White |
|---|---|
| How will you attend ICAP-27? | I am planning on in-person attendance |
