An unconventional geometric phase gate between two arbitrary qubits in a two-dimensional network

We show that an unconventional geometric phase gate between an arbitrary pair of distant qubits in a two-dimensional network can be obtained. In the scheme, the off-resonant Raman transitions between two ground states of the trapped atoms, which, induced by the cavity modes and external fields, can lead to selective qubit-qubit coupling. As a typical application, this interaction mechanism can be used to realize unconventional geometric phase gates. The advantage of the proposed scheme is that the atomic spontaneous emission is effectively suppressed, which makes the scheme very robust against decoherence. (C) 2015 Optical Society of America