Quantum simulation with alkali and alkaline-earth Rydberg-arrays

Recently, cold alkali atoms in optical tweezer arrays have emerged as a versatile platform for quantum simulation. I will review these developments and give an update about ongoing experiments with alkaline-earth atoms: 1) I will introduce atom-by-atom assembly as a fast and simple method to generate defect-free atomic arrays. 2) I will review how such arrays can be used as a quantum simulator for specific types of transverse- & longitudinal-field Ising-models with 1/R^6 interaction. 3) I will outline how we are currently extending this work to Alkaline-Earth atoms using Strontium-88; particularly, I will illustrate how this direction could overcome current coherence limits and enable scalability to larger tweezer arrays.