Quantum Milestone: Turning a Corner with Trapped Ions
When it comes to transporting ions, researchers at Quantinuum have turned a corner. Both literally and figuratively.
The Quantinuum team can now move two different types of ions through a junction in a surface trap, a tiny electrode-filled device at the heart of trapped ion quantum computers.
In a pre-print publication posted on arXiv, Quantinuum researchers outlined how they developed new waveforms that can guide a pair of ytterbium and barium ions through an intersection without the charged particles becoming overly excited or flying out of the trap.
The team tested the technique on a prototype trap with a grid-like architecture that Quantinuum has designed and microfabricated. This trap design will be a central part of future quantum computers such as the System Model H3.
This feat is an important breakthrough in the world of trapped ion quantum computing and for Quantinuum.
The ability to transport paired ions through a junction at the same time and intact is critical for scaling trapped ion systems. It’s also a longstanding technical challenge that trapped ion researchers in academia, government and industry have sought to solve for years.
“What Quantinuum has accomplished is a significant breakthrough for the field of trapped ion research and for our technology,” said Tony Uttley, president, and chief operating officer at Quantinuum. “This will enable us to deliver faster quantum computers with more qubits and fewer errors.”
Smooth transport of ions
Quantinuum’s technologies are based on the Quantum Charged Coupled Device (QCCD) architecture, a concept first introduced by the Ion Storage Group at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in the early 2000s.
Like other trapped ion technologies, this architecture relies on traps to capture ions in electric fields - or wells. Gates are performed on small chains of ions, which can be reordered and reconfigured within the architecture, enabling all-to-all connectivity.
In Quantinuum’s System Model H1 technologies, each well contains an ytterbium ion and a barium ion. The ytterbium ion functions as a qubit while the barium is cooled with a laser to reduce the motions of both ions, a technique known as sympathetic cooling. This cooling makes it possible to maintain low error rates in quantum computing operations for long calculations.
The H1-1 and H1-2 machines currently use a trap with a simple geometry or design that resembles railroad tracks. Wells of ions are moved back and forth along these linear tracks and swapped as needed to run an algorithm.
This linear design works well with fewer qubits. But it has limitations that make scaling difficult. Adding hundreds, much less thousands of qubits, would require the tracks to be much longer. It also would take more time to reposition and reset qubits.
To overcome these challenges, Quantinuum researchers have proposed moving to traps with more complex geometries. The System Model H2 will incorporate a racetrack-like design. The System Model H3 and beyond will use two-dimensional traps that resemble a city street grid with multiple railroad lines and intersections.
This design, however, also poses challenges. Getting those tracks to behave well at intersections is difficult and can jar ions and cause unwanted motion – especially those with different masses. It is somewhat like maneuvering a bullet train and allowing it to turn left or right at 90 degrees, or continue moving straight, without causing the cars to rock.
Quantinuum researchers were able to turn an ytterbium-barium ion pair around sharp corners with little motion. Until now, researchers envisioned having to separate paired ions and move them through junctions one a time, which would dramatically slow the operation. “To our knowledge, this is the first time any team has simultaneously moved two different species of ions through a junction in a surface trap,” said Dr. Cody Burton, a senior advanced physicist who worked on the project and lead author of the arXiv paper.
What’s next?
Researchers will continue to test and refine this new method.
Their goal is to expand from moving a single well to transporting several through multiple junctions at the same time. From there, they plan to incorporate this methodology into the System Model H3, which is expected to be the first Quantinuum quantum technology with the two-dimensional, grid-like trap.
“This new configuration will be key for scaling quantum computers in the hundreds, and then thousands, of high-fidelity qubits,” Uttley said. “While scaling, the qubits will maintain the high-quality characteristics such as low gate errors, long coherence times, and low cross-talk for which Quantinuum’s technologies are known.”
About Quantinuum
Quantinuum, the world’s largest integrated quantum company, pioneers powerful quantum computers and advanced software solutions. Quantinuum’s technology drives breakthroughs in materials discovery, cybersecurity, and next-gen quantum AI. With over 500 employees, including 370+ scientists and engineers, Quantinuum leads the quantum computing revolution across continents.
If we are to create ‘next-gen’ AI that takes full advantage of the power of quantum computers, we need to start with quantum native transformers. Today we announce yet again that Quantinuum continues to lead by demonstrating concrete progress — advancing from theoretical models to real quantum deployment.
The future of AI won't be built on yesterday’s tech. If we're serious about creating next-generation AI that unlocks the full promise of quantum computing, then we must build quantum-native models—designed for quantum, from the ground up.
Around this time last year, we introduced Quixer, a state-of-the-art quantum-native transformer. Today, we’re thrilled to announce a major milestone: one year on, Quixer is now running natively on quantum hardware.
Why this matters: Quantum AI, born native
This marks a turning point for the industry: realizing quantum-native AI opens a world of possibilities.
Classical transformers revolutionized AI. They power everything from ChatGPT to real-time translation, computer vision, drug discovery, and algorithmic trading. Now, Quixer sets the stage for a similar leap — but for quantum-native computation. Because quantum computers differ fundamentally from classical computers, we expect a whole new host of valuable applications to emerge.
Achieving that future requires models that are efficient, scalable, and actually run on today’s quantum hardware.
That’s what we’ve built.
What makes Quixer different?
Until Quixer, quantum transformers were the result of a brute force “copy-paste” approach: taking the math from a classical model and putting it onto a quantum circuit. However, this approach does not account for the considerable differences between quantum and classical architectures, leading to substantial resource requirements.
Quixer is different: it’s not a translation – it's an innovation.
With Quixer, our team introduced an explicitly quantum transformer, built from the ground up using quantum algorithmic primitives. Because Quixer is tailored for quantum circuits, it's more resource efficient than most competing approaches.
As quantum computing advances toward fault tolerance, Quixer is built to scale with it.
What’s next for Quixer?
We’ve already deployed Quixer on real-world data: genomic sequence analysis, a high-impact classification task in biotech. We're happy to report that its performance is already approaching that of classical models, even in this first implementation.
This is just the beginning.
Looking ahead, we’ll explore using Quixer anywhere classical transformers have proven to be useful; such as language modeling, image classification, quantum chemistry, and beyond. More excitingly, we expect use cases to emerge that are quantum-specific, impossible on classical hardware.
This milestone isn’t just about one model. It’s a signal that the quantum AI era has begun, and that Quantinuum is leading the charge with real results, not empty hype.
Stay tuned. The revolution is only getting started.
Our team is participating in ISC High Performance 2025 (ISC 2025) from June 10-13 in Hamburg, Germany!
As quantum computing accelerates, so does the urgency to integrate its capabilities into today’s high-performance computing (HPC) and AI environments. At ISC 2025, meet the Quantinuum team to learn how the highest performing quantum systems on the market, combined with advanced software and powerful collaborations, are helping organizations take the next step in their compute strategy.
Quantinuum is leading the industry across every major vector: performance, hybrid integration, scientific innovation, global collaboration and ease of access.
- Our industry-leading quantum computer holds the record for performance with a Quantum Volume of 2²³ = 8,388,608 and the highest fidelity on a commercially available QPU available to our users every time they access our systems.
- Our systems have been validated by a #1 ranking against competitors in a recent benchmarking study by Jülich Research Centre.
- We’ve laid out a clear roadmap to reach universal, fully fault-tolerant quantum computing by the end of the decade and will launch our next-generation system, Helios, later this year.
- We are advancing real-world hybrid compute with partners such as RIKEN, NVIDIA, SoftBank, STFC Hartree Center and are pioneering applications such as our own GenQAI framework.
Exhibit Hall
From June 10–13, in Hamburg, Germany, visit us at Booth B40 in the Exhibition Hall or attend one of our technical talks to explore how our quantum technologies are pushing the boundaries of what’s possible across HPC.
Presentations & Demos
Throughout ISC, our team will present on the most important topics in HPC and quantum computing integration—from near-term hybrid use cases to hardware innovations and future roadmaps.
Multicore World Networking Event
- Monday, June 9 | 7:00pm – 9:00 PM at Hofbräu Wirtshaus Esplanade
In partnership with Multicore World, join us for a Quantinuum-sponsored Happy Hour to explore the present and future of quantum computing with Quantinuum CCO, Dr. Nash Palaniswamy, and network with our team.
Register here
H1 x CUDA-Q Demonstration
- All Week at Booth B40
We’re showcasing a live demonstration of NVIDIA’s CUDA-Q platform running on Quantinuum’s industry-leading quantum hardware. This new integration paves the way for hybrid compute solutions in optimization, AI, and chemistry.
Register for a demo
HPC Solutions Forum
- Wednesday, June 11 | 2:20 – 2:40 PM
“Enabling Scientific Discovery with Generative Quantum AI” – Presented by Maud Einhorn, Technical Account Executive at Quantinuum, discover how hybrid quantum-classical workflows are powering novel use cases in scientific discovery.
See You There!
Whether you're exploring hybrid solutions today or planning for large-scale quantum deployment tomorrow, ISC 2025 is the place to begin the conversation.
We look forward to seeing you in Hamburg!
Quantinuum has once again raised the bar—setting a record in teleportation, and advancing our leadership in the race toward universal fault-tolerant quantum computing.
Last year, we published a paper in Science demonstrating the first-ever fault-tolerant teleportation of a logical qubit. At the time, we outlined how crucial teleportation is to realize large-scale fault tolerant quantum computers. Given the high degree of system performance and capabilities required to run the protocol (e.g., multiple qubits, high-fidelity state-preparation, entangling operations, mid-circuit measurement, etc.), teleportation is recognized as an excellent measure of system maturity.
Today we’re building on last year’s breakthrough, having recently achieved a record logical teleportation fidelity of 99.82% – up from 97.5% in last year’s result. What’s more, our logical qubit teleportation fidelity now exceeds our physical qubit teleportation fidelity, passing the break-even point that establishes our H2 system as the gold standard for complex quantum operations.
This progress reflects the strength and flexibility of our Quantum Charge Coupled Device (QCCD) architecture. The native high fidelity of our QCCD architecture enables us to perform highly complex demonstrations like this that nobody else has yet to match. Further, our ability to perform conditional logic and real-time decoding was crucial for implementing the Steane error correction code used in this work, and our all-to-all connectivity was essential for performing the high-fidelity transversal gates that drove the protocol.
Teleportation schemes like this allow us to “trade space for time,” meaning that we can do quantum error correction more quickly, reducing our time to solution. Additionally, teleportation enables long-range communication during logical computation, which translates to higher connectivity in logical algorithms, improving computational power.
This demonstration underscores our ongoing commitment to reducing logical error rates, which is critical for realizing the promise of quantum computing. Quantinuum continues to lead in quantum hardware performance, algorithms, and error correction—and we’ll extend our leadership come the launch of our next generation system, Helios, in just a matter of months.