Arrays of cold atoms in optical tweezers are emerging as a promising candidate for developing quantum information processing architectures; striking results in the last few years range from the exploration of many-body dynamics to quantum optimization and computation. Yet, while coherent many-body dynamics can be controlled with high fidelity by driving the whole array with global lasers, on the other hand single-atom addressing remains a key technical challenge; so far, this latter type of control was believed to be necessary for universal quantum computation. On the contrary, in this work we develop a model for universal quantum computation which is entirely based on globally driving an array of cold atoms, without ever requiring single atom addressing – from initialization to readout. Our results open completely new perspectives for the design of atomic quantum processors, but also highlight novel and unexpected connections between quantum information and out-of-equilibrium many-body dynamics.

Our research was published on PRL: https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.131.170601