A photon-photon quantum gate based on Rydberg interactions

The interaction between Rydberg states of neutral atoms is strong and long-range, making it appealing to put it to use in the context of quantum technologies. Recently, first applications of this idea have been reported in the fields of quantum computation(1) and quantum simulation(2-4). Furthermore, electromagnetically induced transparency allows one to map these Rydberg interactions to light(5-15). Here we exploit this mapping and the resulting interaction between photons to realize a photon-photon quantum gate(16,17), demonstrating the potential of Rydberg systems as a platform also for quantum communication and quantum networking(18). We measure a controlled-NOT truth table with a fidelity of 70(8)% and an entangling-gate fidelity of 63.7(4.5)%, both post-selected upon detection of a control and a target photon. The level of control reached here is an encouraging step towards exploring novel many-body states of photons or for future applications in quantum communication and quantum networking(18).