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Parallelized telecom quantum networking with an ytterbium-171 atom array

Nature Physics (2025)Cite this article

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Abstract

The integration of quantum computers and sensors into a quantum network enables new capabilities in quantum information science. Most networks with atom-like qubits operate at visible or near-ultraviolet wavelengths and require conversion to the telecom band for long-distance communication, which reduces efficiency and potentially introduces noise. Here we report high-fidelity entanglement between ytterbium-171 atoms and optical photons generated directly in the telecommunication band, where fibre loss is low. The nuclear spin of the atom is entangled with a single photon in the time-bin basis, yielding a high atom-measurement-corrected atom–photon Bell state fidelity. This can be further improved by addressing photon measurement errors. By imaging the atom array onto an optical fibre array, we also implement a parallelized networking protocol that can increase the remote entanglement rate proportionately with the number of channels. We also preserve coherence on a memory qubit during operations on communication qubits. These results support the integration of atomic systems into scalable quantum networks.

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Fig. 1: Overview of the platform.
Fig. 2: Multilevel control of the ytterbium-171 array.
Fig. 3: Atom–photon entanglement.
Fig. 4: Parallelization with a fibre array.
Fig. 5: MCN.

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Data availability

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding authors upon request.

Code availability

The analysis codes related to this study are available from the corresponding authors upon request.

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Acknowledgements

We acknowledge H. Bernien, J. Thompson, M. Saffman, E. Goldschmidt and B. DeMarco for stimulating discussions. We thank H. Bernien and A. Kaufman for critical reading of the manuscript. We also thank C. Anderson for generously sharing his SNSPD system. We acknowledge funding from the NSF QLCI for Hybrid Quantum Architectures and Networks (NSF award number 2016136); the NSF PHY Division (NSF award numbers 2112663 and 2339487); the NSF Quantum Interconnects Challenge for Transformational Advances in Quantum Systems (NSF award number 2137642); the ONR Young Investigator Program (ONR award number N00014-22-1-2311); the AFOSR Young Investigator Program (AFOSR award number FA9550-23-1-0059); and the US Department of Energy, Office of Science, National Quantum Information Science Research Centers.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physics, The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, USA

    Lintao Li, Xiye Hu, Zhubing Jia, William Huie, Won Kyu Calvin Sun,  Aakash, Yuhao Dong, Narisak Hiri-O-Tuppa & Jacob P. Covey

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  1. Lintao Li
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Contributions

L.L., X.H., Z.J. and J.P.C. envisioned this experiment. L.L., X.H. and Z.J. led this experiment and analysed the results. All authors contributed to the experimental techniques, the interpretation and analysis of data, and the vision for the parallelized networking architecture. W.H. performed the state preparation and measurement error correction analysis. W.K.C.S., A., Y.D. and N.H.-O.-T. performed the analysis of the optical cavity and contributed to those discussions in the paper. J.P.C. supervised this work, wrote the main text and directed the writing of the Supplementary Information.

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Correspondence to Lintao Li or Jacob P. Covey.

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Extended data

Extended Data Table 1 Error budget for entanglement generation and measurement
Full size table

Extended Data Fig. 1 Layout of the experiment.

The experiment is performed in a glass cell and the magnetic field is oriented vertically. Two microscope objectives are arranged horizontally. The first objective sends in the 760-nm optical tweezer array and collects the emitted telecom photons, and the second objective images the tweezer array for diagnostic purposes and performs fluorescence detection of the atoms. Optical pumping via 3P1 is performed with a horizontal beam (green) that has horizontal linear polarization37. Raman rotations of the metastable nuclear spin qubit are performed with a horizontal beam (blue) that has near-circular polarization. The clock beam (orange) and telecom beam (red) both propagate along the B-field axis with circular polarization. They propagate in opposite directions.

Extended Data Fig. 2 Measured photon arrival possibility, atom survival simulation, and atomic temperature versus number of attempts.

The blue histogram shows the summarized photon arrival versus attempt index of all the X-basis measurements. The orange curve shows the Monte Carlo simulation of the atom survival versus attempt index under same condition, showing good agreement between the exponential decay rates of the photon arrival probability and the expected atom survival. The green data shows atomic temperature after a number of entanglement attempts measured through release-recapture, solid line shows an exponential fit.

Extended Data Fig. 3 Experiment sequence for the attempt loop.

attempt_loop.pdf (a) Sub-dopper cooling. (b) State initialization to \(\left\vert {g}_{-}\right\rangle\). (c) Atomic X(Z)-basis measurement with (without) a Raman π/2 pulse before atomic state readout. (d) Atom-photon entanglement generation, a clock pulse transfer the atom from \(\left\vert {g}_{-}\right\rangle\) to \(\left\vert \uparrow \right\rangle\) at the start.

Extended Data Fig. 4 Magic conditions for metastable Raman transition.

(a) Simulated Raman π pulse fidelity under different single-photon Rabi frequencies and phase offsets between horizontal and vertical components. Here we set B = 120 G, Δ(3/2) = + 612 MHz. Within the contour we expect the π-pulse fidelity to exceed 99.9%. (b) The corresponding two-photon Raman Rabi frequency.

Extended Data Fig. 5 Atom-photon entanglement fidelity degradation from residual atom-motion entanglement.

(a) Illustration of the motion state evolution during REG sequence. The non-commutativity between eiΔk⋅x and \({e}^{-i{H}_{m}\Delta t}\) leads to non-overlapping motion wavefunctions associated to the early (blue) and late (red) time bin. (b) Fidelity degradation from radial and axial atom-motion entanglement as a function of time-bin separation. As our \(\Delta \overrightarrow{k}\) has components along both radial and axial directions, we calculate effects on the overall atom-photon Bell state fidelity from both axial and radial thermal states for different temperatures. The grey dashed line indicates Δt = 2.8μs which we use in our experimental sequence. We expect a ≈ 0.9% fidelity reduction from both radial and axial motion combined.

Extended Data Fig. 6 Time-delay interferometer (TDI).

An amplitude-modulating EOM directs single photons into either the free-space or the fiber-delay arm of the interferometer. The relative phase of the interferometer is locked continuously to a 1112-nm reference, and intermittently to a 1389-nm reference (see text for detail). A motor-driven fiber paddler maintains polarization stability in the fiber.

Extended Data Fig. 7 TDI visibility.

Pulse modulated 1389-nm CW light were sent through the same single-photon collection fiber into the short/long arm of the interferometer. A ramping voltage applied to the fast piezo actuator results in two interference fringes after the 50:50 BS, and are measured by two regular PDs in place of the SNSPDs, shown in red/blue. From the two fringes we extract an averaged visibility of 96.7(2)%.

Extended Data Fig. 8 Atom-photon entanglement infidelity and relative yield under different telecom Rabi frequencies and magnetic fields after post-selecting on receiving ≥1 1389-nm photons.

We find that using higher Rabi frequency and operating under higher B-field strength result in better atom-photon entanglement fidelities. Under a fixed B-field strength, there exist several local minima of atom-photon entanglement infidelity where the off-resonant transition from \(\left\vert \uparrow \right\rangle\) goes through multiples of 2Ï€. The star indicates the settings used our experiment.

Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary Sections 1–3, Figs. 1–5 and Table 1.

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Li, L., Hu, X., Jia, Z. et al. Parallelized telecom quantum networking with an ytterbium-171 atom array. Nat. Phys. (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-025-03022-4

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