Deterministic measurement of a Rydberg superatom qubit via cavity-enhanced single-photon emission

Abstract

With Rydberg dipole interactions, a mesoscopic atomic ensemble becomes a superatom that behaves like a single atom but couples collectively with photons. It is potentially a strong candidate as a qubit in quantum information science, especially for quantum networks. In this paper, we report a cavity-enhanced single-photon interface for a Rydberg superatom and demonstrate deterministic qubit readout via a photon burst. We make use of a low-finesse ring cavity to enhance the atom–photon interaction and obtain in-fiber single-photon generation efficiency of 44%. Harnessing the dipole interaction between two Rydberg levels, we may create either a sequence of multiple single photons or nothing, conditioned on an initial qubit state. We achieve a measurement fidelity of 93.0% in 4.8 µs. Our work complements the experimental toolbox of harnessing Rydberg superatoms for quantum information applications.