Photonic controlled-PHASE gates through Rydberg blockade in optical cavities

We propose a scheme for high-fidelity photonic controlled-PHASE gates using a Rydberg blockade in an ensemble of atoms in an optical cavity. The gate operation is obtained by first storing a photonic pulse in the ensemble and then scattering a second pulse from the cavity, resulting in a phase change depending on whether the first pulse contained a single photon. We show that the combination of a Rydberg blockade and optical cavities effectively enhances the optical nonlinearity created by the strong Rydberg interaction and makes the gate operation more robust. The resulting gate can be implemented with cavities of moderate finesse, allowing for highly efficient processing of quantum information encoded in photons. As an illustration, we show how the gate can be employed to increase the communication rate of quantum repeaters based on atomic ensembles.