Information Storage and Processing in Rydberg Atoms
Abstract
Experiments performed under this grant were designed to exploit the extreme electric field sensitivity of highly-excited Rydberg atoms to test methods for asserting coherent control over inter- and intra-atomic dynamics. The work focused on the application of Rydberg wavepacket techniques to investigate information storage and processing within model quantum systems. New methods for manipulating and probing quantum dynamics in Rydberg atoms were developed and used to read and write information to and from Rydberg data registers, and to protect quantum information from decoherence caused by unmeasured environmental interactions. Specifically: (i) intense, short electromagnetic pulses were used to read classical information stored in the momentum-space probability distributions of single Rydberg electrons; (ii) well-controlled electric fields were utilized to exploit the coupling of electron spin and orbital angular momentum in Rydberg fine-structure doublets to fabricate arbitrary quantum bits and implement universal single qubit logic gates; and (iii) the effectiveness of several different schemes for reducing the deleterious action of decoherence on qubits stored in Rydberg atoms was examined.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Dec 01, 2008
- Accession Number
- ADA496451
Entities
People
- Robert R. Jones
Organizations
- University of Virginia