Fast, continuous and coherent atom replacement in a neutral atom qubit array

Neutral atom quantum processors are a promising platform for scalable quantum computing. An obstacle to implementing deep quantum circuits is managing atom loss, which constitutes a significant fraction of all errors. Current approaches require at least an order of magnitude longer time than gate and measurement operations to replace lost atoms. Here, we demonstrate fast, continuous atom reloading of 171Yb metastable nuclear spin qubits. A continuously loaded reservoir near the computation zone enables on-demand atom extraction with tweezer arrays up to 500 times per second. New, stochastically filled qubit arrays can be initialized 30 times per second when including single-atom preparation, non-destructive imaging and initialization. Existing qubits in the metastable state are undisturbed by the reloading process. This work establishes a solid foundation for exploring fully fault-tolerant quantum computation with neutral atom arrays, and will also support zero-deadtime quantum metrology and timekeeping. We will also discuss recent progress towards implementing high-speed single atom preparation.

[1] Li, Y., Bao, Y., Peper, M., Li, C., & Thompson, J. D. (2025). Fast, continuous and coherent atom replacement in a neutral atom qubit array. arXiv preprint arXiv:2506.15633 (2025).