Peer-Reviewed Research Shows Atlantic Quantum’s Fluxonium Qubit Architecture Enables Quantum Operations with Record Fidelities

The results are published as the startup secures a contract with the Air Force Research Laboratory and AFWERX and opens a Swedish subsidiary for chip fabrication.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. & GOTHENBURG, Sweden – September 25, 2023 – Atlantic Quantum, a developer of scalable quantum computers, today announced new research that shows the company’s fluxonium-based qubit architecture achieves the lowest error rates to date for superconducting qubits. Published in Physical Review X, the peer-reviewed research demonstrates how the novel superconducting qubit architecture can perform robust operations between qubits (the building blocks of quantum computers) with greater accuracy than scientists have previously been able to achieve. This technology, stemming from years of work performed at MIT by the co-founders of Atlantic Quantum, now forms the basis of the company’s quantum processors.

Quantum computers are engineered to efficiently solve complicated computational problems in critical industries, such as pharmaceuticals, industrial chemistry and materials science. Error rates in today’s quantum computers remain high, however, and because these errors require fixing, no qubit architecture to date has been able to implement the desired applications. Combined with physically complex hardware requirements, these factors hinder the practical use and adoption of quantum computing, a crucial technology that McKinsey projects could account for nearly $1.3 trillion in value by 2035.

Atlantic Quantum is evolving quantum computing from vision to reality by building fault-tolerant quantum computers using a novel qubit architecture and proprietary qubit control technique. The new research, whose authors include Atlantic Quantum co-founders Leon Ding, Youngkyu Sung, Bharath Kannan, Simon Gustavsson and William Oliver, elucidates the importance of error rate reduction for constructing useful quantum computers. The research demonstrates that the introduced qubit architecture supports two-qubit gate fidelities exceeding 99.9% accuracy and single-qubit gate fidelities of 99.99% accuracy.

“This result marks the first time that the state-of-the-art single- and two-qubit gate performance was advanced with a different type of superconducting qubit since the invention of the more standard transmon qubit in 2007,” said Leon Ding, co-founder and lead author of the research paper.

Reducing error rates is a pivotal step toward achieving fault-tolerance in quantum computing, directly affecting the number of qubits required for error-correction protocols and thereby significantly reducing resource overhead.

“Historically, the quantum computing sector has approached the challenges of high error-rates and restricted scalability separately, and solutions that improved one typically came at the cost of the other. At Atlantic Quantum, we’re building quantum computers based on a new circuit that can address both accuracy and scalability from the ground up. We are singularly focussed on eliminating the tradeoffs that typically arise when trying to solve both issues simultaneously.” said Bharath Kannan, co-founder and CEO at Atlantic Quantum.

The publication of this milestone comes during a period of momentous growth for the company. Earlier this month, Kannan was named to the MIT Technology Review’s 35 Innovators Under 35 list, where he and the Atlantic Quantum team were recognized for their breakthrough achievements in quantum computing. The company also recently completed the buildout of its first R&D facility and opened a Swedish subsidiary for chip fabrication. In August 2023, Atlantic Quantum was selected by AFWERX for a Direct-to-Phase II contract in the amount of $1.25 million focused on developing fluxonium-based quantum computing hardware, to address the most pressing challenges of the Department of the Air Force (DAF).  

To read the full research paper, titled “High-Fidelity, Frequency-Flexible Two-Qubit Fluxonium Gates with a Transmon Coupler,” visit the Physical Review X website here.

For more information on the company or to view its open positions, visit https://www.atlantic-quantum.com/.

About Atlantic Quantum

Atlantic Quantum believes that developing fault-tolerant quantum hardware is the key to commercializing quantum computing. We take on this uniquely tough challenge with a team of deep experts in the field, anchored in Cambridge and Gothenburg to reflect our MIT and Chalmers roots. Our combined U.S. and EU presence helps attract talent, investments, and partnerships to accelerate the development and commercialization of scalable quantum computing. We offer flexible work in a fast-moving start-up environment, with strong ties to world-class academic research. Find us online at: http://www.atlantic-quantum.com.

Media Contact:
Bharath Kannan
press@atlantic-quantum.com