Physicists at Caltech have created the largest qubit array ever assembled, consisting of 6,100 neutral-atom qubits trapped in a grid by lasers. This accomplishment, a significant step toward the vision of large-scale quantum computers, is a leap from previous arrays of this kind, which contained only hundreds of qubits. The research was published in Nature, in a paper titled “A tweezer array with 6100 highly coherent atomic qubits.”
A key achievement was showing that this larger scale did not come at the expense of quality. The team maintained superposition for about 13 seconds—a record for hyperfine qubits in an optical tweezer array—while manipulating individual qubits with 99.98% accuracy. The researchers also demonstrated the ability to shuttle atoms hundreds of micrometers across the array while maintaining superposition, a key feature of neutral-atom quantum computers that enables more efficient error correction.
The researchers, led by Professor Manuel Endres, plan to link the qubits in their array together in a state of entanglement, a necessary step for carrying out full quantum computations. The study was funded by a range of government and private entities, including the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Energy, and DARPA.
Read the full announcement from Caltech here and the paper in Nature here. For additional context, review QCR’s previous report on a superconducting cat qubit chip from AWS and Caltech here.
September 27, 2025
Leave A Comment