Demonstration of Rydberg blockade, a neutral atom CNOT gate, and entanglement generation

This thesis covers the first demonstration of a Rydberg blockade mediated Controlled-NOT quantum gate between two individually addressed neutral atoms and the use of this gate to generate entanglement. This gate is performed on two atoms separated by 8.7 mum and was used to generate the entangled Bell state 12 (|00⟩ + |11⟩) with a fidelity of .73+/-.10. This demonstration requires the use of a Magneto Optical Trap to load single cold atoms into a Far Off Resonance Dipole Trap. Manipulations of the trapped atoms using two photon interactions allow both single and two qubit quantum gates to be performed. Discussions of these interactions and of the gate errors due to these interactions are provided. This is followed by a description of the experimental apparatus used to perform these operations, and finally, a discussion of the results of the various techniques that are needed to perform these gates. An analysis of the quantum gates demonstrated here leads to several areas where further refinements can be made to improve the gate fidelity in future work.