We just built a quantum memory that lasts for ten hours, which is huge compared to the old record of just one.
March 23, 2026
Original Paper
Beyond-Ten-Hour Coherence in a Decoherence-Free Trapped-Ion Clock Qubit
arXiv · 2603.19631
The Takeaway
Quantum computers are notoriously difficult to build because their basic units of information, qubits, are extremely fragile and usually decay in seconds. By keeping a qubit stable for an entire workday, this team has demonstrated that long-term quantum storage is possible, a critical step toward building a global quantum internet.
From the abstract
Quantum systems promise to revolutionize information processing science and technology [1-3]. The preservation of quantum coherence, the defining property of qubits, fundamentally constrains the performance of quantum information processing with quantum memories [4]. While trapped atomic ions theoretically support million-year coherence based on spontaneous emission [5-7], experimental demonstrations have reached far less, only about an hour [8-13]. Here we combine clock-state qubits with decohe