Researchers have proposed an unusual new quantum bit built around superfluid helium-3 that calculations suggest could be around 100 times less error-prone than conventional superconducting qubits.
The concept, developed by scientists at the University of Surrey in collaboration with Northwestern University, aims to tackle one of quantum computingโs biggest problems: protecting extremely fragile quantum information from environmental noise.
Instead of storing information primarily in electrically charged superconducting circuits, the proposed device would exploit quantized mechanical oscillations in electrically neutral superfluid helium.
Because the superfluid carries no electric charge, researchers predict that the system could be naturally less sensitive to some forms of electromagnetic and electrical noise that disturb today's quantum processors.
The device remains theoretical and has not yet been experimentally demonstrated. The team's next major step is to build a prototype and test whether the predicted reduction in errors can be achieved in practice.
The research was published in npj Quantum Information.
Why Quantum Computers Make So Many Errors
Quantum computers process information using qubits.
Unlike an ordinary computer bit, which is represented as either 0 or 1, a qubit can occupy quantum combinations of those states.
This enables quantum processors to manipulate information in fundamentally different ways.
But there is a major problem.
Quantum states are extraordinarily fragile.
Tiny disturbances from the surrounding environment can change or destroy the information stored in a qubit.
This loss of quantum information is broadly associated with decoherence.
Noise Is a Major Barrier to Scaling Quantum Computers
Many of today's most advanced quantum processors use superconducting qubits.
These devices are manufactured as tiny electrical circuits and operated at extremely low temperatures.
They can be controlled with great precision, but their electrical nature also makes them vulnerable to environmental disturbances.
Stray charges, electromagnetic fluctuations and imperfections in surrounding materials can all interfere with their quantum states.
A single qubit may already be difficult to protect.
When a quantum computer contains hundreds, thousands or potentially millions of physical qubits, managing these errors becomes much more challenging.
Quantum Error Correction Comes at a Cost
One way researchers tackle this problem is through quantum error correction.
Instead of relying on a single physical qubit to store important quantum information, the information can be distributed across many physical qubits.
Errors can then be detected and corrected without directly measuring and destroying the underlying quantum state.
But this protection is expensive.
A useful logical qubit may require many physical qubits.
Reducing errors at the hardware level could therefore significantly decrease the resources required for future quantum computers.
This is where the new superfluid proposal could become important.
A Different Type of Qubit
The University of Surrey team proposes a device called the Superfluid Helium Oscillator Quantum, or SHOQ, device.
Rather than relying solely on conventional superconducting electrical circuits, the design uses the quantum behaviour of superfluid helium-3.
Superfluid helium is a remarkable state of matter that appears at extremely low temperatures.
Under these conditions, the liquid can display quantum behaviour on a macroscopic scale.
One of its defining characteristics is its ability to flow without ordinary viscosity.
Why Superfluid Helium Is So Unusual
In an ordinary liquid, particles experience interactions that lead to viscosity and energy loss during flow.
A superfluid behaves differently.
Quantum effects cause the fluid to enter a collective state in which certain forms of flow can occur with essentially no friction.
Helium can become superfluid when cooled to temperatures close to absolute zero.
The Surrey researchers propose using oscillations in this quantum fluid as the basis for storing quantum information.
The Importance of Being Electrically Neutral
One of the most attractive features of helium is that it is electrically neutral.
Conventional superconducting qubits often rely on electrical charge and electromagnetic fields.
That makes them susceptible to charge noise and related disturbances.
A superfluid helium-based quantum degree of freedom does not interact with electrical noise in exactly the same way.
The researchers therefore expect some common sources of decoherence to have far less influence on the SHOQ device.
A Qubit Based on Mechanical Motion
The proposed system can be thought of as a microscopic quantum mechanical oscillator.
The device would contain superfluid helium inside a carefully engineered microfluidic structure.
The fluid supports oscillations.
At quantum scales, the energy of those oscillations becomes quantized rather than continuously variable.
Researchers propose using selected quantum states of these oscillations to encode a qubit.
This creates a form of quantum information based on the controlled motion of a superfluid.
What the Calculations Predict
The researchers developed the parameters and physical specifications needed for such a device to operate as a qubit.
According to their calculations, the SHOQ design could experience error rates approximately 100 times lower than conventional superconducting qubits under the noise mechanisms considered.
That would represent a major improvement if reproduced experimentally.
However, the 100-fold figure is a theoretical prediction, not a measured performance result.
No functioning SHOQ qubit has yet demonstrated this error advantage in the laboratory.
From Known Physics to a New Device
Lead researcher Dr. Priya Sharma explained that the individual physical ingredients behind the proposal are not themselves new.
What the team has done is combine them into a specific microfluidic quantum-device architecture and calculate the conditions necessary for it to function as a qubit.
In other words, the researchers have moved from a general scientific possibility to a detailed device proposal.
The mathematics specifies parameters that engineers can now attempt to reproduce experimentally.
Why Building the Prototype Matters
Quantum technologies often behave differently in real devices than idealized theoretical calculations predict.
Fabrication defects can introduce unexpected noise.
Control systems may disturb the quantum state.
Connections to measurement equipment can create additional channels for energy loss.
A prototype is therefore essential.
Only by constructing the SHOQ device can researchers measure quantities such as coherence time, control fidelity and actual error rates.
The next stage of the project will focus on that experimental validation.
The Necessary Temperatures Are Already Achievable
Operating the device would require extremely low temperatures.
That might appear to be a major obstacle.
However, physicists have already developed experimental systems capable of cooling helium-3 into the required superfluid regime.
The challenge is therefore not discovering how to reach such temperatures from scratch.
Instead, researchers must combine known superfluid techniques with a carefully engineered microfluidic quantum device.
It May Not Need to Replace Existing Qubits
An important aspect of the proposal is that the researchers are not necessarily trying to replace superconducting quantum processors.
Future quantum computers may use hybrid architectures containing several different kinds of quantum hardware.
One technology might be particularly good at performing calculations quickly.
Another might preserve quantum information for longer periods.
Instead of forcing a single qubit design to perform every task, engineers could connect different systems and exploit the strengths of each.
A Possible Quantum Memory
One potential role for the SHOQ device is as a quantum memory.
Quantum processors need to store delicate quantum states while calculations are performed elsewhere.
A useful quantum memory should preserve that information for as long as possible without introducing errors.
If a superfluid helium qubit proves highly resistant to electromagnetic noise, it could potentially store quantum information while superconducting qubits perform faster computational operations.
The stored state could later be transferred back into the processor.
Computing and Memory Could Use Different Hardware
This would resemble a principle already familiar in conventional computing.
Modern computers contain processors optimized for calculations and separate memory technologies optimized for data storage.
Quantum computers may eventually evolve in a similar direction.
Different physical platforms could specialize in different tasks.
The SHOQ device could therefore become useful even if it never becomes the primary computational qubit.
Connecting Superfluids to Superconducting Circuits
For a hybrid system to work, the different quantum components must communicate.
The researchers envision combining superfluid-based devices with existing superconducting technology.
Such integration would require reliable methods for transferring quantum states without destroying the information they contain.
This is a major engineering challenge, but hybrid quantum systems are already an active area of research.
The new proposal adds superfluid helium to the list of candidate quantum technologies that might be incorporated into such systems.
Why Lower Physical Error Rates Matter
Suppose a physical qubit has a high probability of making an error during computation.
A large amount of additional hardware may then be needed to detect and correct those errors.
If the intrinsic error rate can be lowered substantially, fewer physical resources may be needed to construct reliable logical qubits.
This could have major implications for scalability.
A 100-fold improvement would therefore matter not simply because an individual qubit works better.
It could potentially change the size and complexity of the error-correction infrastructure surrounding it.
Superfluid Physics Meets Quantum Engineering
The proposal also brings together two fields that have historically developed along somewhat different paths.
Superfluid helium has long been used to study fundamental quantum physics.
Superconducting circuits have emerged as one of the leading platforms for quantum information processing.
The SHOQ concept attempts to connect these worlds.
Instead of studying a superfluid only as an unusual state of matter, researchers propose using its collective quantum motion as a technological resource.
Helium-3 Is a Quantum Material With Special Properties
Helium-3 is an isotope of helium containing two protons and one neutron.
At sufficiently low temperatures, helium-3 enters exotic superfluid phases produced through quantum pairing.
Its behaviour has fascinated condensed-matter physicists for decades.
The Surrey proposal takes advantage of this established body of knowledge.
Rather than inventing an entirely unknown material, researchers are attempting to engineer a quantum-information device from a system whose low-temperature physics is already extensively studied.
Designing Around the Sources of Noise
Most qubit research asks how to prevent the environment from interacting with a quantum state.
The SHOQ proposal approaches part of the problem by choosing a physical system that does not strongly couple to certain environmental disturbances in the first place.
Because the superfluid is charge-neutral, some electrical fluctuations should have far less influence.
This does not mean the device would be immune to all noise.
Mechanical vibrations, thermal effects, material imperfections and other forms of coupling could still produce errors.
The actual importance of these effects will only become clear through experiments.
The 100-Fold Improvement Still Needs Proof
The researchers are careful to distinguish prediction from demonstration.
The calculations indicate that the architecture could provide roughly two orders of magnitude lower error rates.
But the device has not yet shown that performance experimentally.
The prototype may reveal additional noise sources that were not dominant in the theoretical model.
Conversely, experimental refinements could potentially improve performance further.
For now, the result should therefore be understood as a promising engineering proposal backed by detailed calculations.
A Prototype Could Test the Core Idea
Building the first SHOQ device will allow researchers to ask several critical questions.
Can superfluid oscillations be reliably prepared in the required quantum states?
Can those states be controlled?
Can researchers measure them without destroying their usefulness?
How long does the stored quantum information remain coherent?
And most importantly, are the measured error rates actually much lower than those of established superconducting devices?
Answers to those questions will determine whether the concept can move beyond theory.
A Link to the Transmon Qubit
The research involved Professor Jens Koch of Northwestern University, one of the scientists associated with the development of the transmon qubit.
Transmons are now among the most widely used superconducting qubits.
They were themselves designed partly to reduce sensitivity to electrical noise compared with earlier superconducting qubit architectures.
The involvement of expertise from this field is significant because the proposed SHOQ device may eventually need to operate alongside superconducting quantum technologies rather than independently of them.
Could Quantum Computers Become Hybrid Machines?
Quantum computing currently includes many competing hardware platforms.
Researchers are developing superconducting circuits, trapped ions, neutral atoms, photons, semiconductor spins and several other systems.
Each has strengths and weaknesses.
Superconducting qubits can be operated quickly but face coherence and scaling challenges.
Other systems may preserve information longer but perform gates more slowly or be difficult to integrate.
The future may therefore involve combining multiple technologies.
Superfluid quantum devices could potentially become another component of that ecosystem.
A New Direction Rather Than a Finished Quantum Computer
The new research does not demonstrate a working superfluid quantum computer.
It does not show a processor outperforming today's machines.
And it does not yet prove that the predicted 100-fold error reduction will survive real-world fabrication and operation.
What it provides is a detailed proposal for a new physical way to encode quantum information.
That proposal is sufficiently concrete that researchers can now attempt to build and test it.
Why This Could Matter for Quantum Scaling
The central challenge in quantum computing is no longer simply creating a few qubits.
Scientists have already demonstrated processors containing significant numbers of them.
The harder challenge is making large systems reliable enough to perform useful calculations before accumulated errors overwhelm the result.
Improving physical qubits themselves is therefore one of several paths toward scalable quantum computing.
If superfluid helium can offer substantially lower intrinsic error rates, it may help reduce the enormous overhead associated with fault-tolerant machines.
From Frictionless Liquid to Quantum Information
Superfluid helium is best known for behaviours that seem almost impossible from an everyday perspective: flowing without ordinary friction and exhibiting quantum effects across macroscopic scales.
The University of Surrey team proposes adding another possible role โ storing quantum information.
By turning quantized motion in the superfluid into a qubit, researchers hope to exploit its electrical neutrality as a natural shield against important sources of noise.
The mathematical design predicts an error rate around 100 times lower than conventional superconducting qubits.
Now comes the decisive test.
Researchers must build the device and determine whether a frictionless quantum liquid can become a practical tool for making quantum computers more reliable.
Journal reference
Priya Sharma, Jens Koch and Eran Ginossar. โTowards a micromechanical qubit based on quantized oscillations in superfluid helium.โ npj Quantum Information, 2026.