Fast entangling gates for Rydberg atoms via resonant dipole-dipole interaction

Abstract: The advent of digital neutral-atom quantum computers relies on the development of fast and robust protocols for high-fidelity quantum operations. In this work, we introduce a novel scheme for entangling gates using four atomic levels per atom: a ground state qubit and two Rydberg states. A laser field couples the qubit to one of the two Rydberg states, while a microwave field coupling the two Rydberg states enables a resonant dipole-dipole interaction between different atoms. We show that this interaction can mediate controlled-Z gates that are faster and less sensitive to Rydberg decay than state-of-the-art Rydberg gates based on van der Waals interactions. Moreover, we systematically stabilize our protocol against interatomic distance fluctuations and analyze its performance in realistic setups with rubidium or cesium atoms. Our results open up new avenues to the use of dipolar interactions for universal quantum computation with neutral atoms.