Why everyone in quantum computing is buzzing about Google’s move into ‘neutral atoms’

Adam Kaufman was already “physicist famous” before Google came calling this spring. A leading quantum researcher at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and a fellow at JILA—a research institute for the physical sciences run by NIST and the University of Colorado, Boulder—Kaufman is an expert in the use of lasers to precisely control rare-earth atoms for timekeeping and information processing. In March, news that Google Quantum AI was hiring Kaufman to lead a new Boulder-based hardware team sent shockwaves through the tight-knit community of experts in atomic physics and lasers in the area. Google’s quantum research program has until recently centered on superconducting qubits, or quantum bits, which use supercooled electronic circuits to mimic the quantum behavior of atoms. This approach has been considered the surest path to reaching fault-tolerant quantum computing—the moment when the technology moves from cool experiment to critical infrastructure. [Photo: Atom Computing] But an alternative technology is now gaining traction: so-called neutral atom quantum computers that use individual atoms as their qubits. The atoms are “neutral” because they have no net…