Spin-exchange interactions between circular Rydberg atoms over long times
Abstract
Arrays of neutral atoms excited to Rydberg levels have emerged as one of the most promising platforms for quantum computation and simulation. With the hope to outperform classical devices, the number of atoms has been increased by orders of magnitude. However, the interaction time, i.e., the maximum accumulated time during which an atom interacts with its neighbours, has been limited to a few microseconds only. This restrains the number of gates per atom or prevents the simulation of long-time dynamics of quantum many-body systems. Here, we observe the spin-exchange interaction between two spin 1/2s encoded in laser-trapped circular Rydberg atoms over more than 60μs and 40 spin-oscillation periods, improving the state of the art by an order of magnitude. These unprecedented timescales allow us to record for weak atomic trapping a collapse and revival of the spin-exchange oscillation contrast induced by spin-motion coupling. Our results constitute the first observation of this coupling with laser-trapped Rydberg atoms. To counteract its detrimental effect for quantum simulation, we demonstrate a novel dynamical decoupling method that prevents the collapse of the spin oscillations. This method exploits the advantages of our recently developed hybrid platform that enables the measurement and the optical manipulation of long-lived circular Rydberg atoms with auxiliary Rydberg atoms. This work opens a direct route to long-duration quantum simulation of strongly-interacting many-body systems.
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BibTeX
@misc{duranhernandez2026spinexchange,
title = {{Spin-exchange interactions between circular Rydberg atoms over long times}},
author = {Andrés Durán-Hernández and Gautier Creutzer and Aurore Alice Young and Abderrahmane Kassid and Yohann Machu and Jean-Michel Raimond and Michel Brune and Clément Sayrin},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2609.37766},
eprint = {2609.37766},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.37766},
note = {CC BY-NC-SA 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Spin-exchange interactions between circular Rydberg atoms over long times
AU - Andrés Durán-Hernández
AU - Gautier Creutzer
AU - Aurore Alice Young
AU - Abderrahmane Kassid
AU - Yohann Machu
AU - Jean-Michel Raimond
AU - Michel Brune
AU - Clément Sayrin
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/30
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2609.37766
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.37766
AB - Arrays of neutral atoms excited to Rydberg levels have emerged as one of the most promising platforms for quantum computation and simulation. With the hope to outperform classical devices, the number of atoms has been increased by orders of magnitude. However, the interaction time, i.e., the maximum accumulated time during which an atom interacts with its neighbours, has been limited to a few microseconds only. This restrains the number of gates per atom or prevents the simulation of long-time dynamics of quantum many-body systems. Here, we observe the spin-exchange interaction between two spin 1/2s encoded in laser-trapped circular Rydberg atoms over more than 60μs and 40 spin-oscillation periods, improving the state of the art by an order of magnitude. These unprecedented timescales allow us to record for weak atomic trapping a collapse and revival of the spin-exchange oscillation contrast induced by spin-motion coupling. Our results constitute the first observation of this coupling with laser-trapped Rydberg atoms. To counteract its detrimental effect for quantum simulation, we demonstrate a novel dynamical decoupling method that prevents the collapse of the spin oscillations. This method exploits the advantages of our recently developed hybrid platform that enables the measurement and the optical manipulation of long-lived circular Rydberg atoms with auxiliary Rydberg atoms. This work opens a direct route to long-duration quantum simulation of strongly-interacting many-body systems.
ER -