A Rydberg blockade CNOT gate and entanglement in a 2D array of neutral atom qubits

Abstract: We present experimental results on two-qubit Rydberg blockade quantum gates and entanglement in a two-dimensional qubit array. Without post selection against atom loss we achieve a Bell state fidelity of $0.73\pm 0.05$, the highest value reported to date. The experiments are performed in an array of single Cs atom qubits with a site to site spacing of $3.8 ~ \mu\rm m$. Using the standard protocol for a Rydberg blockade C$_Z$ gate together with single qubit operations we create Bell states and measure their fidelity using parity oscillations. We analyze the role of AC Stark shifts that occur when using two-photon Rydberg excitation and show how to tune experimental conditions for optimal gate fidelity.