However, even though scientists have been trapping atoms<\/a> for a decade, the main limitation until now has been controlling them on a large scale. Meanwhile, current optical tweezers rely on bulky, expensive parts such as spatial light modulators or acousto-optic deflectors, which limit the array size.<\/p>\n The California Institute of Technology recently reached 6,100 trapped atoms using these methods. \u201cTheir report is an amazing achievement,\u201d Will elaborated. Still, the feat is still far short of what will be needed for practical quantum advantage.<\/p>\n \u201cWith our metasurface tweezer array<\/a> approach, we hope to scale neutral-atom arrays even further, perhaps even beyond 100,000 atoms,\u201d Will revealed. For the study, the team replaced those systems with metasurfaces, which are flat, ultra-thin optical devices made from millions of nanoscale \u201cpixels.\u201d<\/p>\n According to the team, when a single laser beam passes through a metasurface, the pixels shape the light into thousands (or hundreds of thousands) of tightly focused laser spots simultaneously.<\/p>\n \u201cThe metasurfaces used in this work can be considered a superposition of tens of thousands of flat lenses over the same plane and differing in their focal spot location,\u201d Yu said. \u201cUpon the incidence of a laser beam, one metasurface can simultaneously produce tens of thousands of focal spots.\u201d<\/p>\n A massive advance<\/p>\n Made from silicon nitride and titanium dioxide, the metasurfaces can withstand extremely powerful lasers with optical intensities of more than 2000 Watts per square millimeter (W\/mm2). This is approximately a million times more intense than sunlight as it reaches Earth.<\/p>\n \u201cThe high-power handling capability of metasurfaces coupled with the scalability of cleanroom nanofabrication of ever larger and more precise devices makes our platform uniquely capable of realizing massively scalable optical tweezer arrays,\u201d Yuan Xu, a graduate student working on the project, noted in a statement<\/a>.<\/p>\n The physicists demonstrated the versatility of the metasurface optical tweezer platform by trapping atoms into a number of highly uniform 2D arrays. <\/p>\n These patterns included a 1,024-site square lattice, quasicrystal, and Statue of Liberty patterns with hundreds of sites and a circle with atoms spaced just under 1.5 microns apart.<\/p>\n They also created a 3.5-millimeter-wide metasurface containing more than 100 million pixels, capable of generating a 600-by-600 array, or 360,000 optical tweezers<\/a> in total. That is two orders of magnitude beyond existing technologies.<\/p>\n As per the researchers, neutral-atom arrays have a realistic path to scalability, with potential benefits extending beyond quantum computers to technologies such as quantum simulators and portable optical atomic clocks.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Z2_9da38c.jpg\" "\\"100,000-qubit")
An illustration of a neutral-atom array.
Credit: Will Lab, Columbia University<\/a><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Z3_0e8673.jpg\" "\\"100,000-qubit")
Experimental setup in which metasurface atomic tweezer arrays are created.
Credit: Will Lab, Columbia University<\/a><\/p>\n