Towards 171Yb atom array in a near-concentric cavity*

Neutral atom arrays have been demonstrated to be a promising architecture for quantum computing. 171-ytterbium has been shown to be an excellent atomic species for computation due to its nuclear spin of 1/2. This architecture can be improved upon by strongly coupling the atom arrays to a high finesse cavity which has applications in quantum networking, cavity mediated spin-squeezing, and high-fidelity readout. In this talk, we will discuss the progress of our experimental setup towards a 171Yb neutral atom array inside a cavity. With the completion of our chamber assembly, we generate the 2D & 3D MOT and are working towards trapping atoms in a tweezer array. We also present the results of our cavity characterization including cavity alignment sensitivity, transmission, and finesse measurements. These results are a crucial step towards exploring cavity QED as we combine the atomic and cavity sides of our experiment.