Ultracold molecules: vehicles to scalable quantum information processing

Abstract

In this paper, we describe a novel scheme to implement scalable quantum information processing using Li–Cs molecular states to entangle 6Li and 133Cs ultracold atoms held in independent optical lattices. The 6Li atoms will act as quantum bits to store information and 133Cs atoms will serve as messenger bits that aid in quantum gate operations and mediate entanglement between distant qubit atoms. Each atomic species is held in a separate optical lattice and the atoms can be overlapped by translating the lattices with respect to each other. When the messenger and qubit atoms are overlapped, targeted single-spin operations and entangling operations can be performed by coupling the atomic states to a molecular state with radio-frequency pulses. By controlling the frequency and duration of the radio-frequency pulses, entanglement can be either created or swapped between a qubit messenger pair. We estimate operation fidelities for entangling two distant qubits and discuss scalability of this scheme and constraints on the optical lattice lasers. Finally we demonstrate experimental control of the optical potentials sufficient to translate atoms in the lattice.