A tweezer array with 6,100 highly coherent atomic qubits.

Abstract

Optical tweezer arrays^1,2 have transformed atomic and molecular physics, now forming the backbone for a range of leading experiments in quantum computing^3-8, simulation^1,9-12 and metrology^13-15. Typical experiments trap tens to hundreds of atomic qubits and, recently, systems with around 1,000 atoms were realized without defining qubits or demonstrating coherent control^16-18. However, scaling to thousands of atomic qubits with long coherence times and low-loss and high-fidelity imaging is an outstanding challenge and critical for progress in quantum science, particularly towards quantum error correction (QEC)^19,20. Here we experimentally realize an array of optical tweezers trapping more than 6,100 neutral atoms in around 12,000 sites, simultaneously surpassing state-of-the-art performance for several metrics that underpin the success of the platform. Specifically, while scaling to such a large number of atoms, we demonstrate a coherence time of 12.6(1) s, a record for hyperfine qubits in an optical tweezer array. We show room-temperature trapping lifetimes of about 23 min, enabling record-high imaging survival of 99.98952(1)% with an imaging fidelity of more than 99.99%. We present a plan for zone-based quantum computing^5,21 and demonstrate necessary coherence-preserving qubit transport and pick-up/drop-off operations on large spatial scales, characterized through interleaved randomized benchmarking. Our results, along with recent developments^8,22-24, indicate that universal quantum computing and QEC with thousands to tens of thousands of physical qubits could be a near-term prospect.