{"id":449276,"date":"2025-09-25T01:41:10","date_gmt":"2025-09-25T01:41:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/449276\/"},"modified":"2025-09-25T01:41:10","modified_gmt":"2025-09-25T01:41:10","slug":"physicists-set-record-with-6100-qubit-array","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/449276\/","title":{"rendered":"Physicists set record with 6,100-qubit array"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Caltech<\/p>\n

This image shows 6,100 cesium atoms trapped by highly focused laser beams called optical tweezers. The width of the circle is about one millimeter. Credit: Caltech\/Endres Lab<\/p>\n

Quantum computers will need large numbers of qubits to tackle challenging problems in physics, chemistry, and beyond. Unlike classical bits, qubits can exist in two states at once\u2014a phenomenon called superposition. This quirk of quantum physics gives quantum computers the potential to perform certain complex calculations better than their classical counterparts, but it also means the qubits are fragile. To compensate, researchers are building quantum computers with extra, redundant qubits to correct any errors. That is why robust quantum computers will require hundreds of thousands of qubits.<\/p>\n

Now, in a step toward this vision, Caltech physicists have created the largest qubit<\/a> array ever assembled: 6,100 neutral-atom qubits trapped in a grid by lasers. Previous arrays of this kind contained only hundreds of qubits.<\/p>\n

This milestone comes amid a rapidly growing race to scale up quantum computers. There are several approaches in development, including those based on superconducting circuits<\/a>, trapped ions, and neutral atoms, as used in the new study.<\/p>\n

“This is an exciting moment for neutral-atom quantum computing,” says Manuel Endres, professor of physics at Caltech. “We can now see a pathway to large error-corrected quantum computers. The building blocks are in place.” Endres is the principal investigator of the research published<\/a> today in Nature. Three Caltech graduate students led the study: Hannah Manetsch, Gyohei Nomura, and Elie Bataille.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

The team used optical tweezers<\/a>\u2014highly focused laser beams<\/a>\u2014to trap thousands of individual cesium atoms in a grid. To build the array of atoms, the researchers split a laser beam into 12,000 tweezers, which together held 6,100 atoms in a vacuum chamber. “On the screen, we can actually see each qubit as a pinpoint of light,” Manetsch says. “It’s a striking image of quantum hardware at a large scale.”<\/p>\n

A key achievement was showing that this larger scale did not come at the expense of quality. Even with more than 6,000 qubits in a single array, the team kept them in superposition for about 13 seconds\u2014nearly 10 times longer than what was possible in previous similar arrays\u2014while manipulating individual qubits with 99.98% accuracy.<\/p>\n

“Large scale, with more atoms, is often thought to come at the expense of accuracy, but our results show that we can do both,” Nomura says. “Qubits aren’t useful without quality. Now we have quantity and quality.”<\/p>\n

The team also demonstrated that they could move the atoms hundreds of micrometers across the array while maintaining superposition. The ability to shuttle qubits is a key feature of neutral-atom quantum computers that enables more efficient error correction compared with traditional, hard-wired platforms like superconducting qubits.<\/p>\n