Scalable Qubit Arrays for Quantum Computation and Optimisation

Nov 1, 2025

Scalable Qubit Arrays for Quantum Computation and Optimisation

Quantum computation offers a revolutionary approach to information processing, providing a route to efficiently solve classically hard problems such as factorisation and optimisation as well as unlocking new applications in material science and quantum chemistry that could in future be scaled up to accelerate drug design or optimised materials for aerospace and manufacturing. Whilst large-scale applications will require thousands of qubits, in the near-term small (100 qubit) quantum processors will reach a regime in which the quantum hardware is able to solve problems not accessible even on the largest available conventional supercomputers.

This project will utilise the SQuAre hardware platform for quantum computing based on scalable arrays of neutral atoms that is able to overcome the challenges to scaling of competing technologies, offering programmable control of up to 225 identical and high quality atomic qubits.

Already our team has demonstrated the highest single-qubit gate fidelities for large scale arrays on this hardware, and pioneered new approaches to realising weighted graph problems using locally addressed light-shifts. The aim of this PhD is to design and test new analogue and digital algorithms tailored for the neutral-atom platform to target industrially-relevant computation and optimisation problems, and perform pioneering demonstrations on the SQuAre system.

A major focus of this work will be developing new approaches to investigating qudit-encodings relevant for graph colouring problems, and to extend hardware performance to implement high-fidelity multi-qubit gate operations to enable efficient implementation of complex digital algorithms.

For more details see the project webpage or apply here.