  Controlled phase (CPHASE) gates can in principle be realized with trapped
neutral atoms by making use of the Rydberg blockade. Achieving the ultra-high
fidelities required for quantum computation with such Rydberg gates is however
compromised by experimental inaccuracies in pulse amplitudes and timings, as
well as by stray fields that cause fluctuations of the Rydberg levels. We
report here a comparative study of analytic and numerical pulse sequences for
the Rydberg CPHASE gate that specifically examines the robustness of the gate
fidelity with respect to such experimental perturbations. Analytical pulse
sequences of both simultaneous and stimulated Raman adiabatic passage (STIRAP)
are found to be at best moderately robust under these perturbations. In
contrast, optimal control theory is seen to allow generation of numerical
pulses that are inherently robust within a predefined tolerance window. The
resulting numerical pulse shapes display simple modulation patterns and their
spectra contain only one additional frequency beyond the basic resonant Rydberg
gate frequencies. Pulses of such low complexity should be experimentally
feasible, allowing gate fidelities of order 99.90 - 99.99% to be achievable
under realistic experimental conditions.
