While ion trapping research has been going on for years, Neutral atoms present an intriguing approach to quantum computing. Several labs have more recently ramped up their ability to control ensembles of neutral atoms for quantum computations. To implement a neutral atom system, engineers can set up four laser beams around the atom ensemble to form a magneto-optical trap (MOT).
Labs typically use either cesium (Cs) or rubidium (Rb) atoms for this work. By confining the atoms with this quadruple laser system, we can cool the atoms down to mK temperatures. Now that we have hundreds of millions of neutral atoms in a reservoir, we can transfer a small number of them into an addressable array. Th challenge is to do gates. I will explain that in another post in detail.
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