Neutral Atom Qubits
Qubits built from individual neutral atoms, laser-cooled and trapped in optical tweezers or lattices. A leading qubit modality with strong scaling potential.
Neutral atom qubits use individual atoms, typically rubidium, cesium, or ytterbium, as their quantum elements. The atoms are cooled to near absolute zero using laser cooling techniques, then trapped in precise positions using focused laser beams called optical tweezers or optical lattices.
The quantum information is stored in the internal energy states of each atom. Quantum gates, which are operations that manipulate qubits, are performed using additional laser pulses that drive transitions between atomic states.
Neutral atoms have several attractive properties for quantum computing: they are all identical (eliminating fabrication variation), they can be arranged in programmable 2D or 3D arrays, and they have naturally long coherence times. The main challenges have been gate speed and gate fidelity, both of which have improved rapidly since 2020.
Scalability is a key argument for neutral atom systems. Adding more qubits means adding more atoms to the trap, which is more straightforward than the physical circuit engineering required to scale superconducting systems.
Colorado is arguably the global capital of neutral atom quantum computing. Atom Computing in Boulder demonstrated 1,180 qubits in a 1,225-site array in 2023. Infleqtion, also in Boulder, ships a neutral atom quantum computer commercially. Google opened a Boulder lab in 2026 specifically to build a neutral atom program, hiring Adam Kaufman from CU Boulder. The concentration of neutral atom expertise in the Front Range traces directly to NIST and JILA research in atomic physics.