September 8, 2026 -- Helium – the lightest atom that can be laser-cooled and controlled – powers a new design for high-powered, stable quantum computers. 

In a paper published in PRX Quantum, a team led by University of Chicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering and Physics Department Assoc. Prof. Jacob Covey laid out a new concept that could turn helium’s light weight into the next generation of quantum computers. 

Once built, the computer could use high-powered lasers as “optical tweezers” to capture and control individual atoms of helium, the second-lightest element overall and the lightest that can be trapped with current technology. This offers a major advance over designs based on lithium, the third-lightest element.

“Helium is even lighter than lithium, so that provides quantum tunneling rates about three times faster, at least,” said co-first author Zheyuan Li, a PhD student in Covey’s lab. “Helium also has a much more well-resolved energy structure, which means it could be laser-cooled much more easily compared to lithium atoms.”

The design uses helium-3, an isotope with different quantum properties than the helium-4 used to cool MRI machines and fill party balloons. Peers in the scientific community have praised the innovation. 

“By using the lightest trappable atom, this work turns low mass into a real advantage – faster tunneling, faster transport, and controllable motional qubits. It's a compelling blueprint for the next generation of fermionic quantum simulators,” said Princeton University Physics Prof. Waseem Bakr, who was not involved in the research.

The team’s next step is to build the device, collaborating with UChicago Physics Asst. Prof. Zoe Yan, a co-author of this work, for the first time trapping and controlling individual helium-3 atoms.

“The foundation is there, and the progress is advancing now to the point where we would hope to have these atoms in tweezers for the first time probably within the next year or two,” Covey said.

Tractor beams and stepstools

Although they’re also used to handle and control small items, optical tweezers are very different from the tiny tongs of watchmakers and estheticians. Rather, Covey compares them to science fiction tractor beams, with high-powered lasers capturing and holding individual atoms the way the Death Star might nab a spaceship. 

“You just have one beam, one focused spot, and the atom is attracted to that spot,” Covey said.

To trap the atom, the laser must emit enough energy to take the atom from its ground state to its excited state. The amount of energy needed depends on the type of atom, which is why hydrogen – the lightest element of all – is currently untrappable. It takes too much energy for modern technology. 

Helium is also high-energy, but it has something hydrogen doesn’t – a second electron. This means it can be lured into a temporary metastable state at an energy level between the ground and excited states. Hydrogen, lithium and every other atom with only one electron on the outer shell do not have a metastable state, meaning the jump to excited state needs to be done in one go.

If getting to the excited state is like leaping on a table, the metastable state is like pulling up a stepstool.

In many other elements, that metastable state is measured in seconds. Helium’s metastable state lasts two hours, another helium advantage.

Fermionic vs. bosonic

The helium-3 isotope Covey’s team uses has one fewer neutron than the helium-4 atom filling birthday balloons the world over. But that neutron makes all the difference.

There are two sets of rules that guide how particles interact on the quantum level. They’re either fermionic (named for UChicago’s Enrico Fermi) or bosonic (named for Indian physicist Satyendra Nath Bose). 

Fermionic atoms can’t occupy the same quantum space at the same time, freeing fermionic quantum computers from many of the errors that plague quantum computers based on bosons. Fermionic quantum computing has been a dream since the 1990s, only cracked in early 2026 in two lithium-based models.

Unlike helium-4, helium-3 is fermionic. 

“That would help us to implement fermionic quantum computing much more natively with this platform, rather than trying to use bosonic atoms like helium-4 and then trying to simulate fermionic structure,” Li said. 

While Yan has worked with lithium-6, the next-heaviest fermion after helium-3, in this research context, the lightest fermion of all might not be worth the effort.

“Hydrogen-1 is a boson. For fermionic hydrogen, hydrogen-2 (deuterium) would be needed,” Covey said. “In addition to being much more difficult to work with than helium, hydrogen-2 is actually not even much lighter than helium-3.”

The next step is to build the computer. 

"Helium-3 is very expensive,” said co-first author Rupsa De, a PhD student in Covey's lab. “So we will start with helium-4 and do this first, and then proceed towards using helium-3.”

Covey said these early experiments en route to helium-3 won’t impact global helium-4 shortages. The number of atoms in two grams of helium – roughly enough to fill a single party balloon – is a 3 followed by 23 zeroes.

“We ultimate want only tens of atoms,” Covey said. “If we buy just a five-liter tank of helium, that can last us for many years.”