Hybrid Cavity-QED with Rydberg Atoms and Microwave Circuits

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Atoms and molecules in highly-excited Rydberg states can exhibit very large electric dipole moments, on the order of 1000 Debye. These large dipole moments make them very well suited to studies of light-matter interactions at microwave frequencies, and long-range dipolar interactions in free-space and close to surfaces. They also make samples in high Rydberg states states very amenable to manipulation and trapping using inhomogeneous electric fields. The recent development of a new chip-based experimental architecture which exploits these large electric dipole moments to control the translational motion and internal quantum states of Rydberg atoms and molecules close to surfaces has opened up new opportunities in (i) the development of hybrid approaches to quantum information processing in which gas-phase and solid-state systems are combined, (ii) studies of long-range interactions between Rydberg atoms/molecules and surfaces, and (iii) the preparation and study of gas-phase molecular samples at low temperatures. In the work described in this proposal it is planned to exploit, and further develop, this architecture, in a manner which encompasses the first two of these areas, to perform experiments in a setting which can be described as a hybrid between traditional cavity-quantum-electrodynamics (cavity-QED), involving three-dimensional resonators and two-level quantum systems in the gas-phase, and purely solid-state circuit-QED.To achieve this helium atoms will be prepared in long-lived, circular Rydberg states. These states will then be coupled to microwave fields in the vicinity of chip-based co-planar microwave waveguides to study their coherence times and long-range Rydberg-atom--surface interactions. The off-resonant interaction of these atomic samples with chip-based superconducting microwave resonators will then be exploited for the realisation of new chip-based devices for non-destructive detection of the Rydberg samples.In the long term it is foreseen to use the gas-phase Rydberg atoms in this hybrid system as long-coherence-time quantum memories which are coupled via the chip-based microwave resonators to superconducting circuits in which fast operations can be performed. In this way, the challenges associated with exploiting each system individually for applications in quantum information processing will be circumvented.