A Ytterbium-171 Atom Array in a Near-concentric Optical Cavity

Alkaline earth(-like) atom arrays are an emerging platform for quantum science, enabled by ultra-narrow optical clock transitions and long-lived, well-isolated nuclear spin qubits. Integrating a 171-Yb atom array with an optical cavity enables fast, non-destructive readout and efficient photon-mediated links between spatially separated modules, supporting long-range interactions for large-scale entanglement.

We report our efforts to realize a 171-Yb atom array to a near-concentric Fabry–Perot cavity with a mode waist of 16 um and a finesse of 25000, corresponding to a single-atom cooperativity C=6 at 556 nm. We present progress toward shelving-based fast mid-circuit measurement enabled by high-fidelity qubit readout within tens of microseconds via fast quantum non-demolition (QND) measurements. This capability is essential for fault-tolerant quantum computing. We will also discuss cavity-enhanced emission at 1389 nm, expected to boost photon collection to ∼50%, supporting remote atom–atom entanglement rates up to 10 kHz and scalable quantum networking between distant atom-array nodes.