California Institute of Technology — Physics Colloquium

Fault-tolerant quantum computation must overcome complex control requirements and substantial error-correction overhead. This talk describes reconfigurable neutral-atom arrays in which optical tweezers coherently transport atoms, enabling any-to-any connectivity, high-fidelity programmable operations and mid-circuit processing in a zoned architecture. Parallel control, transversal operations and long-range connections support experiments ranging from precise quantum-scrambling simulations to a universal fault-tolerant processing architecture. Theoretical methods exploiting reconfigurable connectivity reduce error-correction overhead and suggest that useful large-scale computation could require as few as 10,000 atomic qubits. The discussion considers the prospects for realizing this approach in the near term.