Seminar: Ivan Deutsch

January 24, 2025

Quantum Computing with Neutral Atoms

Ivan Deutsch, Department of Physics and Astronomy, UNM

3:00 pm, UNM Centennial Engineering Center, Room 1026
Online Guests: Contact Prof. Osiński <osinski@chtm.unm.edu> for a Zoom link

Abstract: One of the earliest proposals for scalable quantum computers was to encode qubits in individual, optically trapped, ultracold neutral atoms. Like their more famous cousins, atomic ions, qubits encoded in the energy levels of neutral atoms, are all identical, can have long coherence times, and can be controlled with a variety of magnetooptical fields, with tools that build on decades of development for atomic clocks and precision metrology. Unlike with ions, quantum computing architectures have proceeded more slowly, as neutral atoms are harder to trap and they only weakly interact in their ground state. New developments in trapping and laser technology have now opened the door to high-fidelity operations with potentially hundreds to thousands of qubits - neutral atoms are back in the game! In this talk I will review the state of the art and new approaches to reach universal faulttolerant quantum computing with arrays of trapped neutral atoms.

Bio: Prof. Ivan Deutsch is Regents’ Professor of Physics & Astronomy and the Director of the Center for Quantum Information and Control (CQuIC). He received his B.S. from MIT and his Ph.D. from the University of California Berkeley, and joined the faculty at the University of New Mexico in 1995, where he helped to build the Quantum Information Science (QIS) program. His research is at the interface of theoretical quantum optics, atomic physics, and quantum information theory. Prof. Deutsch has co-authored over 100 peerreviewed publications and has delivered over 120 invited talks. He is the PI of the National Science Foundation’s Focused Research Hub in Theoretical Physics, which established CQuIC as a “QIS theory hub” for the nation. He is also the Founding Director of the Quantum New Mexico Institute (QNM-I) a new Category-III UNM center and planned joint institute with Sandia and Los Alamos National Laboratories.