We present the first demonstration of a CNOT gate using neutral atoms. Our implementation of the CNOT uses Rydberg blockade interactions between neutral atoms held in optical traps separated by >8 murm m. We measure CNOT fidelities of F=0.73 and 0.72
using two different gate protocols, and show by measurement of parity oscillations that the gate can be used to generate two-atom states with fidelity at the threshold for entanglement. We anticipate that the long range nature of the Rydberg interaction will be attractive for future extensions of this work to multi-qubit systems.
We demonstrate experimentally that a single Rb atom excited to the $79d_{5/2}$ level blocks the subsequent excitation of a second atom located more than $10 murm m$ away. The observed probability of double excitation of $sim 30%$ is consistent with a
theoretical model based on calculations of the long range dipole-dipole interaction between atoms.
We demonstrate Rabi flopping of small numbers of $rm{^{87}Rb}$ atoms between ground and Rydberg states with $nle 43$. Coherent population oscillations are observed for single atom flopping, while the presence of two or more atoms decoheres the oscill
ations. We show that these observations are consistent with van der Waals interactions of Rydberg atoms.
