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Protected quantum gates using qubit doublons in dynamical optical lattices

Quantum Physics 2026-05-28 v2 Quantum Gases Atomic Physics

Abstract

Quantum computing represents a central challenge in modern science. Neutral atoms in optical lattices have emerged as a leading computing platform, with collisional gates offering a stable mechanism for quantum logic. However, previous experiments have treated ultracold collisions as a dynamically fine-tuned process, which obscures the underlying quantum- geometry and statistics crucial for realising intrinsically robust operations. Here, we propose and experimentally demonstrate a purely geometric two-qubit swap gate by transiently populating qubit doublon states of fermionic atoms in a dynamical optical lattice. The presence of these doublon states, together with fermionic exchange anti-symmetry, enables a two-particle quantum holonomy -- a geometric evolution where dynamical phases are absent. This yields a gate mechanism that is intrinsically protected against fluctuations and inhomogeneities of the confining potentials. The resilience of the gate is further reinforced by time-reversal and chiral symmetries of the Hamiltonian. We experimentally validate this exceptional protection, achieving a loss-corrected amplitude fidelity of 99.91(7)%99.91(7)\% measured across the entire system consisting of more than 1700017'000 atom pairs. When combined with recently developed topological pumping methods for atom transport, our results pave the way for large-scale, highly connected quantum processors. This work introduces a new paradigm for quantum logic, transforming fundamental symmetries and quantum statistics into a powerful resource for fault-tolerant computation.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2507.22112,
  title  = {Protected quantum gates using qubit doublons in dynamical optical lattices},
  author = {Yann Kiefer and Zijie Zhu and Lars Fischer and Samuel Jele and Marius Gächter and Giacomo Bisson and Konrad Viebahn and Tilman Esslinger},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2507.22112},
  year   = {2026}
}
R2 v1 2026-07-01T04:24:39.968Z