MilestoneHardwareConfirmed

Laser tweezers assemble defect-free arrays of single atoms one by one

Jul 11, 2016

Two groups, at Institut d'Optique near Paris and at Harvard and MIT, report filling arrays of laser traps with exactly one atom each by moving atoms into place. Both reach about 50 atoms in arbitrary or regular patterns; the papers appeared in Science.

Why it matters

Reliably filling every trap is the basis of today's neutral-atom quantum computers, where each atom serves as a qubit.

Institut d'Optique · Harvard · MIT

See it on the timeline

Related

Added Oct 27, 2026. Spotted an error? Tell us and we will review it.