MilestoneHardwareConfirmed
Harvard and MIT keep a 3,000-qubit atom array running for over two hours
Sep 15, 2025
Physicists led by Harvard's Mikhail Lukin reported in Nature an array of more than 3,000 neutral-atom qubits that ran for over two hours without restarting. Laser "conveyor belts" brought in fresh atoms to replace lost ones, over 50 million in total, without disturbing stored qubits.
Why it matters
Atom-based machines keep losing atoms and normally must stop to reload; refilling them on the fly is a step toward the long, uninterrupted runs that error-corrected computations will need.
Sources (2)
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Nature
Continuous operation of a coherent 3,000-qubit system
“Using a reloading rate of 300,000 atoms in tweezers per second, we create over 30,000 initialized qubits per second, which we leverage to assemble and maintain an array of over 3,000 atoms for more than 2 hours.”
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Harvard Gazette
Clearing significant hurdle to quantum computing
“The new system operated an array of more than 3,000 qubits for more than two hours — and in theory, the researchers said, could continue indefinitely. Over two hours, more than 50 million atoms had cycled through the system.”
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