Coherent Addressing of Individual Neutral Atoms in a 3D Optical Lattice

We demonstrate arbitrary coherent addressing of individual neutral atoms in a 5 x 5 x 5 array formed by an optical lattice. Addressing is accomplished using rapidly reconfigurable crossed laser beams to selectively ac Stark shift target atoms, so that only target atoms are resonant with state-changing microwaves. The effect of these targeted single qubit gates on the quantum information stored in nontargeted atoms is smaller than 3 x 10(-3) in state fidelity. This is an important step along the path of converting the scalability promise of neutral atoms into reality.