Preparation of Long-Lived, Non-Autoionizing Circular Rydberg States of Strontium

Abstract

Alkaline earth Rydberg atoms are very promising tools for quantum technologies. Their highly excited outer electron provides them with the remarkable properties of Rydberg atoms and, notably, with a huge coupling to external fields or to other Rydberg atoms while the ionic core retains an optically active electron. However, low angular-momentum Rydberg states suffer almost immediate autoionization when the core is excited. Here, we demonstrate that strontium circular Rydberg atoms with a core excited in a $4D$ metastable level are impervious to autoionization over more than a few millisecond time scale. This makes it possible to trap and laser-cool Rydberg atoms. Moreover, we observe singlet to triplet transitions due to the core optical manipulations, opening the way to a quantum microwave to optical interface.

References in corpus (6)

• Probing many-body dynamics on a 51-atom quantum simulator
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Cited by in corpus (20)

• Quantum Computing with Circular Rydberg Atoms
• Quantum logic and entanglement by neutral Rydberg atoms: methods and fidelity
• Long-Lived Circular Rydberg Qubits of Alkaline-Earth Atoms in Optical Tweezers
• Optical coherent manipulation of alkaline-earth circular Rydberg states
• Millisecond-lived circular Rydberg atoms in a room-temperature experiment
• A Coherent Light Shift on Alkaline-Earth Rydberg Atoms from Isolated Core Excitation without Auto-Ionization
• Rydberg quantum computation with nuclear spins in two-electron neutral atoms
• Hyperentanglement of divalent neutral atoms by Rydberg blockade
• Interacting Circular Rydberg Atoms Trapped in Optical Tweezers
• Structure and electron dynamics of planetary states of Sr below the Sr${}^{+}$ $7d$ and $8p$ thresholds
• Isolated-core quadrupole excitation of highly excited autoionizing Rydberg states
• Threading an atom with light
• Quadrupole coupling of circular Rydberg qubits to inner shell excitations
• Autoionization of high-$\ell$ core-excited Rydberg states of alkaline-earth-metal atoms
• Error-budgeting for a controlled-phase gate with strontium-88 Rydberg atoms
• Series of molecular-like doubly excited states of a quasi-three-body Coulomb system
• Light-Assisted Collisions in Tweezer-Trapped Lanthanides
• Tunable two-species spin models with Rydberg atoms in circular and elliptical states
• Tailoring interaction ranges in atom arrays
• Non-destructive optical read-out and manipulation of circular Rydberg atoms