Advanced Quantum Testbeds for Atomic Technologies (AQUA)

Decades of sustained investment in quantum technologies for sensing, communicating and computing based on neutral atoms and cold ions have yielded a fundamental understanding of how to make commercially relevant and significant devices, with new limits achieved for time-keeping, inertial navigation and sensing, as well as leading-edge and emerging quantum computing devices. Despite these fundamental advances, underlying enabling technologies require substantial improvement to make devices practical, deployable, and sufficiently performative to become sustainable commercial products. While new advances in integrated photonic control, laser technologies and optical components are poised to drive these platforms at a substantially accelerated pace, confronting the testing bottlenecks in fully integrated systems is necessary to make meaningful progress. This proposal describes an approach, combining specially designed testbeds with infrastructure programs and investments, and dedicated services, to expedite the path to validation in high-precision and high-performance neutral atom quantum computing hardware.Recently demonstrating cloud-accessible neutral atom processors with record high gate fidelity ,moving-atom architectures, capability to perform error correction with large numbers of logical qubits, and to create magic states through distillation, QuEra Computing Inc is well-positioned to directly stimulate and validate new enabling technologies of direct and crucial significance to scaled quantum computing on a pathway toward utility. Extending this to understand supply-chain challenges on a pathway toward useful processors, QuEra and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have identified a working model to tap into value-creation and create a sustainable pipeline for speeding progression from lab, to fab and ultimately to field-deployed enabling technology.We describe phase-I progress toward and phase-II  creation of test-stand infrastructure, integration with a broader ecosystem of programs at the state and federal level for research support and economic development, and the development of a suite of products and services to accelerate critical enabling technologies.