Although quantum systems with as many as 12 qubits have been demonstrated in the lab, building quantum computers complex enough to perform useful computations will require miniaturizing qubit technology, much the way the miniaturization of transistors enabled modern computers.

Trapped ions are probably the most widely studied qubit technology, but they've historically required a large and complex hardware apparatus. In today's Nature Nanotechnology, researchers from MIT and MIT Lincoln Laboratory report an important step toward practical quantum computers, with a paper describing a prototype chip that can trap ions in an electric field and, with built-in optics, direct laser light toward each of them.

"If you look at the traditional assembly, it's a barrel that has a vacuum inside it, and inside that is this cage that's trapping the ions. Then there's basically an entire laboratory of external optics that are guiding the laser beams to the assembly of ions," says Rajeev Ram, an MIT professor of electrical engineering and one of the senior authors on the paper. "Our vision is to take that external laboratory and miniaturize much of it onto a chip."

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