New US laser technology could unlock 100,000-qubit quantum computers

US researchers at Columbia University, led by Sebastian Will and Nanfang Yu, have developed a groundbreaking laser technology that could enable quantum computers with over 100,000 qubits. By integrating optical tweezers—laser beams that trap individual atoms—with metasurfaces, ultra-thin optical devices composed of millions of nanoscale pixels, the team significantly expanded the scale of neutral-atom arrays used for quantum computing. Neutral-atom arrays trap atoms as qubits in 1D, 2D, or 3D configurations, and the new approach overcomes previous limitations related to bulky, expensive optical components that restricted array size. The team successfully trapped 1,000 strontium atoms, demonstrating the viability of their method at scales far beyond current systems, such as the recent 6,100-atom array achieved by Caltech. Metasurfaces shape a single laser beam into tens of thousands of tightly focused spots simultaneously, enabling massively scalable optical tweezer arrays. Made from silicon nit