SBIR Phase I: Spatially Modulated Light For Trapping And Addressing Of Alkaline-Earth Neutral Atom Qubits

这个小企业创新研究（SBIR）第一阶段项目的更广泛的影响/商业潜力将来自量子计算机的开发，量子计算机将通过实现许多技术来影响许多技术，例如，药物设计的分子模拟和能源应用的催化剂开发，量子机器学习，以及解决调度等优化问题。可扩展的通用量子计算有望成为现代最具变革性的技术之一。应用范围很广，只会随着新量子算法的发展而扩大，其中最大的机会之一是化学和制药行业的分子模拟。例如，尽管是一个数十亿美元的产业，但计算药物发现受到使经典计算机易于处理的计算所必需的近似的限制。为了在商业应用的规模上进行这些模拟，量子比特的数量必须增加几个数量级，超过现有技术水平。如果成功的话，所提出的中性原子的捕获和单独控制的创新将使量子计算机能够扩展到纠错所需的数千个量子比特，通用量子计算。这个小企业创新研究第一阶段项目将开发技术，通过动态，并行光学捕获和碱土量子位的单独寻址，可扩展地捕获和寻址中性原子量子位。中性原子是量子计算的新兴平台，迄今为止的大部分工作都是针对碱性原子（即，具有单个价电子的那些）。碱土金属原子有两个价电子和相应的更丰富的能级结构，这已经证明了很长的捕获相干时间。这个奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并已被认为是值得通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估的支持。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project will result from the development of quantum computers that will impact many technologies by enabling, for example, molecular simulations for drug design and catalyst development for energy applications, quantum machine learning, and solving optimization problems such as scheduling. Scalable, universal quantum computing promises to be one of the most transformative technologies of the modern era. The range of applications are broad and will only expand with the development of new quantum algorithms, with one of the biggest opportunities being molecular simulations for the chemical and pharmaceutical industries. For example, despite being a multi-billion dollar industry, computational drug discovery is limited by the approximations necessary to make calculations tractable for classical computers. In order to perform these simulations at a scale useful for commercial applications, qubit numbers must be increased several orders of magnitude beyond the state of the art. The proposed innovation of trapping and individual control of neutral atoms will, if successful, enable quantum computers to scale to the thousands of qubits needed for error-corrected, universal quantum computing.This Small Business Innovation Research Phase I project will develop technology for scalable trapping and addressing of neutral atom qubits through dynamic, parallelized optical trapping and individual addressing of alkaline earth qubits. Neutral atoms are an emerging platform for quantum computing and the majority of work thus far has been directed towards alkali atoms (i.e., those with a single valence electron). Alkaline earth atoms have two valence electrons and correspondingly a richer energy level structure, which has demonstrated very long trapped coherence times.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.