Our neutral atom project DiNAQC by Planqc has reached an important milestone: the creation of a 10×13 register of strontium atoms. This lays the foundation for computing with neutral atoms at the Ulm Innovation Centre.
If you want to calculate with neutral atoms, you have to catch them in optical traps, cool them and sort them atom by atom using optical tweezers. Only then can the individual atoms be specifically addressed, brought into interaction and used as qubits in a quantum computer. For the DiNAQC quantum computer, Planqc uses neutral strontium atoms as qubits, which are arranged in a rectangular grid using optical tweezers. This clean arrangement as an atomic register – each grid point is an atom is a qubit – is the technological success of the MS 3.1 milestone.
The task is complex: first, the optical trap is stochastically loaded with atoms; each grid point is overfilled with atoms. Then superfluous atoms are removed. With the help of movable optical tweezers, individual atoms can now be removed from any lattice points and moved to empty lattice points. This gradually creates a sorted, fully populated atom register. The qubits are ready.
Operation in Ulm, available via QCI Connect
The fact that Planqc has achieved this in the MS 3.1 milestone proves the technological viability of the approach – and that we are well on the way to the first 100-qubit quantum computer in Germany. But it is also only an intermediate step towards a fully functional quantum computer with at least 100 qubits: Next, Planqc will now upgrade the laser system, allowing 1- and 2-qubit gates to be executed on the neutral atom qubits. This means that quantum algorithms can actually be executed on the atomic register.
planqc
The technology company planqc was founded in 2022 by a research team from the Max Planck Institute for Quantum Optics and the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. planqc builds quantum computers that store information in individual atoms. The qubits are arranged in highly scalable arrays and manipulated with precisely controlled laser pulses. planqc is the first start-up to emerge from Munich Quantum Valley.
