Hybrid Rydberg platform for the observation of long-lived spin-exchange interactions

Over the past decade, platforms that employ arrays of individual atoms excited to Rydberg levels have proven to be particularly well-suited to quantum simulation. However, the duration of the simulation is still limited to a few characteristic interaction times because of the limited lifetimes of the typically-used optically-accessible Rydberg levels.

In this talk, I will present a hybrid platform that encodes data qubits in long-lived circular Rydberg levels and employs ancillary qubits transiently excited to an optically-accessible Rydberg level. The latter enable quantum non-demolition measurement of the data qubits as well as their local optical manipulation. Recently, we have used this hybrid platform to observe spin-exchange oscillations between Rydberg qubits over unprecedented timescales. These results pave the way to the quantum simulation of quantum dynamics over long timescales.