The heart of the design is a tool that quantum physicists have refined over the past two decades: optical tweezers. Unlike the tiny mechanical tongs used by watchmakers, optical tweezers are better imagined as science fiction tractor beams. A single, tightly focused laser beam creates a spot in space that attracts an atom, holding it in place without any physical contact. As Covey describes it, one beam and one focused spot are enough, and the atom simply falls into the light. Arrays of such beams can hold dozens or hundreds of individual atoms, each one acting as a qubit, the fundamental unit of quantum information. The approach has already produced some of the most impressive results in neutral-atom quantum computing, but the choice of atom matters enormously, and that is where helium comes in.

Trapping an atom with light requires the laser to supply enough energy to promote the atom from its ground state to an excited state, and the amount of energy needed depends on the species of atom. Hydrogen, the lightest element of all, is currently out of reach because the jump to its excited state demands more energy than modern technology can conveniently deliver. Helium is also a high-energy atom, but it possesses a crucial feature that hydrogen lacks: a second electron. That extra electron allows helium to settle into a temporary metastable state, an energy level sitting between the ground state and the excited state. Covey offers a vivid analogy: if reaching the excited state is like leaping onto a table, the metastable state is like pulling up a stepstool first. Atoms with only one electron on their outer shell, including hydrogen and lithium, have no such stepstool and must make the jump in a single bound.

The metastable state of helium is remarkable in its own right. In many other elements, comparable states last only seconds before the atom decays back down. Helium’s metastable state persists for roughly two hours, an extraordinarily long lifetime by atomic standards. That longevity gives experimentalists a generous window in which to laser-cool the atoms, trap them, and manipulate them before they decay. Helium’s well-resolved energy structure also makes it easier to laser-cool than lithium, according to Zheyuan Li, a PhD student in Covey’s lab and a co-first author of the paper. Cooling is an essential prerequisite for trapping, because atoms must be slowed almost to a standstill before optical tweezers can grip them reliably.

The second advantage is speed. Because helium is even lighter than lithium, the third-lightest element and the basis of the first fermionic quantum computing demonstrations earlier this year, quantum tunneling rates in a helium-based machine would be about three times faster at minimum, Li explained. Tunneling — the quantum phenomenon in which particles pass through barriers that classical physics says they cannot cross — underlies how atoms interact and exchange information in these simulators. Faster tunneling means faster transport of atoms and faster gate-like operations between them, which translates directly into a machine that can run more complex calculations before decoherence and other imperfections erode the fragile quantum states. In quantum computing, where coherence times are measured in fleeting fractions of a second, a threefold speedup is not a cosmetic improvement; it is a fundamental upgrade to the platform’s capabilities.

There is a subtlety in the choice of isotope, and it is here that the Chicago design makes its most distinctive move. Ordinary helium, the helium-4 that cools MRI machines and fills party balloons, is a boson, one of the two great families into which quantum particles divide. The other family, fermions, is named for University of Chicago legend Enrico Fermi, while bosons take their name from Indian physicist Satyendra Nath Bose. The two families obey fundamentally different rules: fermions cannot occupy the same quantum state at the same time, a prohibition known as the Pauli exclusion principle, while bosons are free to pile into identical states. That antisocial character of fermions turns out to be a blessing for quantum computing, because it frees fermionic machines from many of the errors that plague computers built from bosonic atoms.

Fermionic quantum computing has been a dream since the 1990s, but it was only cracked in early 2026, when two lithium-based models achieved the milestone. The Chicago team proposes to go one better by using helium-3, which has one fewer neutron than helium-4 and is therefore a fermion. Using the lightest fermionic atom that can be trapped means fermionic quantum computing can be implemented natively, Li said, rather than using bosonic atoms and then trying to simulate fermionic structure on top of them. Co-author Zoe Yan, an assistant professor of physics at UChicago who has previously worked with lithium-6, the next-heaviest fermion after helium-3, helped make the case that the extra effort of helium-3 is worthwhile. Hydrogen-1 is a boson, and while fermionic hydrogen-2, or deuterium, exists in principle, Covey noted that deuterium is far more difficult to work with than helium and is not even much lighter than helium-3, erasing most of the mass advantage that motivates the whole design.

The concept has drawn praise from outside the collaboration. Waseem Bakr, a professor of physics at Princeton University who was not involved in the research, said that by using the lightest trappable atom the work turns low mass into a real advantage, delivering faster tunneling, faster transport, and controllable motional qubits, and he called it a compelling blueprint for the next generation of fermionic quantum simulators. Such endorsements matter in a field where competing platforms — superconducting circuits, trapped ions, photonic chips, and neutral atoms — are racing to demonstrate practical advantage, and where the choice of physical substrate can determine how far a design can ultimately scale.

Of course, a concept paper is not a working machine, and the team’s next step is to build one. In collaboration with Yan, the researchers plan to trap and control individual helium-3 atoms for the first time. The foundation is there, Covey said, and progress is advancing to the point where the team hopes to have these atoms in tweezers for the first time probably within the next year or two. The path will begin, somewhat surprisingly, with the wrong isotope. Helium-3 is very expensive, explained Rupsa De, a PhD student in Covey’s lab and the paper’s other co-first author, so the team will start with helium-4 and then proceed toward helium-3. Because helium-4 is bosonic, the early experiments will validate the trapping and control techniques rather than the full fermionic architecture, but they will de-risk the hardest experimental steps before the costly isotope is committed.

Anyone worried that a quantum computer might worsen the world’s helium shortages can rest easy. Covey pointed out that the early experiments will have no impact on global helium-4 supplies, and the arithmetic is striking: two grams of helium, roughly enough to fill a single party balloon, contains a number of atoms that is a three followed by twenty-three zeroes. What the team ultimately wants is only tens of atoms, and a five-liter tank of helium, Covey noted, can last the lab for many years. The contrast between the scale of the ambition and the modesty of the material requirements is part of what makes the proposal so striking. If the team succeeds in suspending single fermionic helium atoms in beams of light over the next couple of years, the lightest trappable atom in the universe may find itself at the center of one of the most consequential technologies of the century, trading its party-trick reputation for a role in machines that compute with the strange rules of quantum mechanics itself.

Subject of Research: A proposed quantum computing architecture using laser-trapped metastable helium-3 atoms for fermionic quantum simulation

Article Title: Helium lifts new quantum computing concept

Article References: Helium lifts new quantum computing concept. (n.d.). Original publication

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: Not provided

Keywords: helium-3, quantum computing, optical tweezers, fermions, metastable atoms, laser cooling, qubits, quantum tunneling, neutral atoms, PRX Quantum, University of Chicago, quantum simulation

The dominant technology in the current generation of quantum computers relies on superconducting circuits, tiny electrical oscillators that, when cooled sufficiently, carry current without resistance. These devices have enabled impressive demonstrations of quantum computation, but they come with a fundamental weakness. Superconducting qubits are exquisitely sensitive to electromagnetic noise and to stray electrical charges, the kind of static electricity that makes hair cling to a balloon on a dry day. Even minuscule perturbations of this sort can scramble the delicate quantum states that encode information, introducing errors that must be corrected through elaborate overhead. As engineers attempt to pack more and more qubits onto a chip, keeping these error rates under control becomes one of the central bottlenecks to scaling the machines up.

The Surrey team, drawn from the university’s Quantum Sciences Group, has proposed a radically different approach to quantum hardware. Their proposed device, named the Superfluid Helium Oscillator Quantum, or SHOQ, would store and manipulate quantum information in quantized oscillations within superfluid helium-3. Because the medium is electrically charge-neutral, the qubit is naturally immune to many of the electromagnetic disturbances and stray charges that torment conventional superconducting devices. According to the team’s theoretical analysis, this intrinsic protection could translate into error rates roughly 100 times lower than those of standard superconducting qubits, a margin that would substantially ease the burden of quantum error correction in a large-scale machine.

The concept is, the researchers note, the first reported design for a qubit based on superfluid helium. While the individual physical ingredients have long been studied in isolation, the Surrey group is the first to assemble them into a coherent microfluidic device architecture and to work out the specific parameters and specifications needed for the device to function as a qubit. Dr Priya Sharma, Daphne Jackson Fellow in Hybrid Quantum Systems at the University of Surrey’s School of Mathematics and Physics and lead author of the study, emphasized that the work is an educated design grounded in established physics rather than a speculative sketch. The mathematics, she explained, indicates that the device should work as intended, and the crucial next step is to fabricate a prototype and test the predictions experimentally.

The underlying physics is as fascinating as the engineering ambition. Helium-3, the lighter isotope of helium, becomes a superfluid at temperatures only a few thousandths of a degree above absolute zero. In this state, the liquid flows with zero viscosity and exhibits quantum behavior on a macroscopic scale, with collective oscillations whose energy levels are quantized just like those of atoms. The SHOQ proposal taps into these quantized mechanical vibrations as the carrier of quantum information. Because these oscillations involve neutral atoms rather than moving charges, they do not couple strongly to the electric fields and charge fluctuations that are ubiquitous in solid-state environments, offering what physicists call a quieter platform for preserving delicate quantum states.

An especially significant feature of the proposal is that the SHOQ device is not intended to replace existing quantum technology outright. The paper outlines how the superfluid-based qubit could be coupled with current superconducting quantum hardware, raising the possibility that the two technologies might operate side by side within a single larger quantum system. Dr Eran Ginossar, Associate Professor at the University of Surrey’s Department of Physics and Advanced Technology Institute and co-author of the study, argued that no single qubit technology needs to do everything. Combining different quantum platforms, he suggested, could allow engineers to exploit the particular strengths of each, and superfluid helium offers a fundamentally new type of quantum hardware to explore. If the predicted performance can be demonstrated in the laboratory, such devices could eventually work alongside superconducting systems as components of hybrid architectures.

One potential application highlighted by the team is quantum memory. In a future hybrid computer, a version of the SHOQ device could serve as a long-lived repository for quantum information, storing fragile states while a separate processor built from different hardware performs calculations. This division of labor mirrors the separation between memory and processing units in classical computers and could prove decisive in the quest for machines that are both powerful and reliable. The low sensitivity of charge-neutral superfluid helium to environmental noise makes it a natural candidate for the memory role, where preservation of quantum coherence over time is the paramount requirement.

The Surrey effort is not proceeding in isolation. The work was carried out in collaboration with Professor Jens Koch of Northwestern University in the United States, a physicist who was among the researchers behind the development of the transmon, the superconducting qubit design that has become the workhorse of much of today’s quantum computing industry. That pedigree gives the new proposal considerable weight, since the transmon itself succeeded by engineering away sensitivity to charge noise, and the SHOQ concept extends the same philosophy into an entirely different physical medium. The involvement of researchers with hands-on experience in bringing a qubit design from theory to widespread laboratory use may help the new idea avoid some of the pitfalls that accompany novel hardware concepts.

The team is now turning its attention to building a prototype to determine whether the theoretical predictions survive contact with reality, an effort supported by an IAA Commercialisation Fellowship awarded to Dr Sharma. The cryogenic challenge is formidable but not unprecedented: although the SHOQ device would need to operate at extremely low temperatures, conditions of exactly this kind have already been achieved experimentally in superfluid helium-3 research laboratories around the world. That existing experimental infrastructure means the path from concept to prototype does not require inventing entirely new cryogenic techniques, only adapting well-established ones to a new microfluidic device. If the prototype confirms the predicted hundredfold reduction in error rates, superfluid helium could move from the margins of low-temperature physics to the center of the conversation about how to scale quantum computers, adding a genuinely new and remarkably quiet material platform to the engineer’s toolkit.

The choice of helium-3 rather than the more common helium-4 is central to the proposal. Helium-4 atoms are bosons and form a superfluid at around two kelvin, but helium-3 atoms are fermions, which means they cannot condense directly. Instead, at temperatures a few thousandths of a degree above absolute zero, pairs of helium-3 atoms bind together in a manner analogous to the Cooper pairs of electrons in a superconductor, and it is these paired atoms that flow without viscosity. This pairing mechanism gives superfluid helium-3 a rich internal structure, including multiple distinct superfluid phases, and endows the liquid with collective modes whose quantum properties are exceptionally well characterized by decades of low-temperature research.

The quantized vibrations that the SHOQ design would exploit belong to a broader family of mechanical quantum systems that physicists have been developing for years. Researchers have previously succeeded in cooling micromechanical drums and membranes to their quantum ground states and entangling them with light, establishing that mechanical oscillators can genuinely store and process quantum information. What has been missing is a mechanical oscillator whose intrinsic noise performance rivals that of the best electronic qubits, and the Surrey team argues that a charge-neutral superfluid medium could supply exactly that, since acoustic modes in helium couple only weakly to the solid-state defects and two-level fluctuators that degrade fabricated resonators on chips.

The significance of a hundredfold reduction in error rates becomes clearer when viewed through the lens of quantum error correction. Theoretical studies of fault-tolerant computation indicate that below a critical error threshold, adding more physical qubits suppresses logical errors exponentially, but the overhead involved is enormous when physical error rates sit near the threshold. Lowering the physical error rate by two orders of magnitude would reduce the number of physical qubits needed per logical qubit by a comparable factor, potentially shrinking the machine required for useful fault-tolerant computation from millions of qubits to a far more manageable scale.

The hybrid vision also echoes patterns from other parts of the quantum technology landscape. Trapped-ion systems already combine different species of ions, using one type for memory and another for logic, while superconducting processors have been coupled to spin defects in diamond and to atomic ensembles acting as quantum memories. The SHOQ concept would extend this modular philosophy to a liquid platform, connecting a microfluidic cell through microwave circuitry to conventional superconducting control electronics. The paper’s authors suggest that such interfaces, rather than any single monolithic technology, may ultimately define how large quantum computers are assembled.

Considerable uncertainty remains, as is inevitable for a purely theoretical design. Real devices must contend with damping of acoustic modes at their boundaries, thermal excitations that must be filtered out, and the practical difficulty of coupling a liquid oscillator strongly enough to microwave circuits to allow fast quantum gates. The prototype planned under the fellowship is intended to probe precisely these questions, and the coming experimental results will determine whether the elegant mathematics translates into working hardware.

Subject of Research: A conceptual superfluid helium-3 based qubit design for fault-tolerant quantum computing

Article Title: Superfluid-based qubit design could be key to scaling up quantum computers

Article References: Superfluid-based qubit design could be key to scaling up quantum computers. (n.d.). Original publication

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: Not provided

Keywords: superfluid helium, qubit, quantum computing, error rates, superconducting qubits, SHOQ device, quantum memory, hybrid quantum systems, npj Quantum Information, University of Surrey, helium-3, microfluidics

The study, led by Gaspard Smith-Vaniz of the University of Zurich together with Simon Christian Stähler of ETH Zurich and Florian Kehl, adopts discounted cash flow (DCF) analysis as its organizing reference. In terrestrial mining, DCF is the gold standard for assessing financial viability: future cash flows are discounted to present value, and a project is considered viable only when its net present value (NPV) exceeds zero. The researchers argue that if lunar mining is ever to mature into an industry, it must ultimately satisfy the same economic decision logic that governs the transition from resources to reserves on Earth. By disaggregating the DCF formulation into its core variables and mapping each to the lunar context, the framework identifies precisely where uncertainty prevents credible valuation.

The analysis reveals that geological uncertainty is the most immediate constraint. While orbital missions such as Clementine, Lunar Prospector, and Chandrayaan-1 have inferred the presence of water ice and other volatiles, little is known about deposit concentration, physical form, and accessibility. Whether a resource is chemically bonded within regolith or concentrated in pure aggregates fundamentally determines the extraction method and the entire cost structure. Key variables such as total extractable quantity, resource grade, and upfront capital costs cannot yet be defined with confidence, which explains why existing techno-economic studies often arrive at contradictory conclusions. Moving from inferred resources to proven reserves will require systematic prospecting campaigns that go far beyond isolated point measurements.

The researchers distinguish between exploration, which serves localized scientific goals, and systematic prospecting, which deliberately acquires regional datasets at scales sufficient for economic assessment. Planned missions such as JAXA’s LUPEX and NASA’s VIPER rover represent valuable steps forward, combining technology demonstration with water-deposit characterization, but they remain fundamentally exploratory. To bridge the gap, the authors advocate mass-produced fleets of identical prospecting systems rather than bespoke one-off rovers, citing how non-recurring engineering costs dominate single-mission budgets. Multi-robot teams, long-endurance rovers, and low-orbit remote sensing platforms could achieve the operational throughput needed to generate robust regional resource models. Hybrid funding models, in which governments purchase data from private companies—similar to NOAA’s commercial data purchases or NASA’s CLPS program—could accelerate this effort while distributing risk.

Market formation emerges as the second critical pillar. Because no established market for lunar materials exists, demand quantity and price remain speculative, creating a chicken-and-egg problem: in-situ resource utilization depends on demand to develop, yet using local resources is often deemed essential for that demand to emerge. The framework argues that demand must come first. Economically robust ventures must offer something people are genuinely willing to pay for, whether returning rare resources such as helium-3 to Earth, manufacturing in low gravity, or refueling satellites. Supply-first infrastructure built in anticipation of customers risks underutilization and capital misallocation. The authors point to helium-3 as an instructive case: unlike most lunar resources, it already commands an established terrestrial market in quantum computing and medical imaging, allowing companies like Interlune to secure advance contracts before any extraction begins.

Policy transparency plays a complementary role in de-risking early ventures. Governments, acting simultaneously as primary customers and regulators, can reduce both market and policy uncertainty through long-term procurement strategies that persist across political cycles, explicit disclosure of expected resource types and quantities, and advanced market commitments such as conditional offtake agreements at predefined price ranges. Regular resource demand outlooks tied to the Artemis program’s operational plans would give firms the credible market signals needed to align capabilities with needs and attract capital. Without such institutional stability, the authors warn, the field remains exposed to budgetary shifts reminiscent of the post-Apollo era.

Technology development, while essential, cannot proceed meaningfully in an informational vacuum. Designing extraction systems implicitly assumes values for resource grade, recovery targets, throughput, and acceptable unit costs. When these upstream inputs are unknown, technology optimization risks embedding false assumptions that later force costly redesigns. The study emphasizes that real mining technologies cannot be fully defined until geological and market parameters are sufficiently constrained. Once they are, learning curves become the dominant force: historical precedent from the launch industry shows that iterative deployment and scaling can drive dramatic cost reductions, with novel technologies exhibiting the steepest learning rates. The goal is to reach a point where resource rent—the difference between resource value and extraction cost per kilogram—turns positive.

Even technically successful systems face a treacherous scaling phase. The authors draw on terrestrial case studies, notably the high-pressure acid leaching process for nickel extraction, to illustrate how prolonged ramp-up periods and unforeseen hurdles can erode investor confidence and financial viability despite demonstrated technical feasibility. In DCF terms, production delays push positive cash flows further into the future, where compounding discount rates can eliminate apparent viability entirely. The researchers stress the importance of engaging terrestrial mining expertise early, applying proven ramp-up strategies, and establishing shared lunar infrastructure—a hub offering communications, power, thermal management, and mobility as common services—so that individual demonstrators can focus on core technologies without duplicating support systems.

Synthesizing these elements, the framework produces a logically ordered critical path: geological characterization must precede market formation, which must precede technology maturation, which must precede operational stability. Departures from this dependency sequence increase the risk of misaligned assumptions, inefficient development, and capital misallocation. By framing DCF as an end-state decision gate rather than a present-day valuation tool, the study provides a coherent roadmap for guiding research, investment, and policy toward an economically viable lunar resource industry. The authors suggest that with coordinated advancement along this path, a self-sustaining cislunar economy—where scientific outposts and commercial ventures reinforce one another—could emerge within decades, giving humanity its first independent foothold on the Moon’s resources.

The study also offers specific policy recommendations, including organizing large-scale international prospecting campaigns, standardizing resource data reporting, developing geostatistical models tailored to lunar conditions, and establishing shared infrastructure with interoperable interfaces. Illustrative pathways for helium-3, oxygen from regolith, and water ice demonstrate how the framework applies differently depending on which informational anchors—geological certainty or demand signals—are already established. In each case, the critical path clarifies where effort and investment can be most effectively deployed to accelerate the transition from speculation to bankable lunar industry.

The framework’s grounding in established mining economics is deliberate. On Earth, discounted cash flow analysis underpins nearly every major investment decision in the extractive industries, with the internal rate of return—the discount rate at which net present value falls to zero—serving as a supplementary benchmark of attractiveness. These tools capture the time-value of money: a dollar of revenue today is worth more than the same dollar years in the future, because capital deployed elsewhere could earn returns in the interim. For capital-intensive ventures with long development horizons, this discounting effect is unforgiving, which is precisely why the authors treat it as the ultimate gate any lunar project must eventually pass.

In positioning their work, the researchers situate it alongside a growing body of techno-economic literature that has modeled specific architectures, including asteroidal extraction schemes and lunar propellant production concepts. Such case studies are valuable, the authors note, because they demonstrate how technical and market variables interact to shape viability. Yet they necessarily rely on speculative assumptions where empirical data are lacking. The new framework takes a complementary approach by refusing to presuppose values that cannot currently be constrained, instead using the absence of those values as a diagnostic signal about sector maturity. Related work on risk-adjusted hurdle rates for space investment has similarly moved the discussion from engineering feasibility toward financial bankability, and the present study extends that conversation by specifying the logical sequence of informational anchors required to satisfy such thresholds.

The paper, published open access in Volume 2 of the journal as article number 3, reflects a collaborative effort spanning institutions in Zurich and draws on the authors’ combined backgrounds in planetary science and space systems. Its early reception—more than four thousand accesses within a short period—suggests considerable interest in bringing analytical discipline to a field often criticized for aspirational thinking. The authors emphasize that their dependency structure is not a normative prescription but an efficiency condition: following it simply minimizes wasted effort under uncertainty.

Ultimately, the framework’s most practical contribution may be its ability to serve as a shared yardstick. Researchers, investors, and policymakers can each locate current activities along the critical path and assess whether they resolve the uncertainties that matter most. By making the requirements for decision-grade economic evaluation explicit, the study offers the lunar resources community a common vocabulary for measuring progress toward an industry that can stand on its own financial merits.

Subject of Research: Economic evaluation framework for assessing the viability of lunar mining projects using discounted cash flow analysis

Article Title: A framework for the economic evaluation of lunar mining projects

Article References: Smith-Vaniz, G., Stähler, S. C., & Kehl, F. (2026). A framework for the economic evaluation of lunar mining projects. Space and Planetary Resources, 2(1), Article 3. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44461-026-00008-9

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s44461-026-00008-9

Keywords: lunar mining, space resources, discounted cash flow, economic viability, in-situ resource utilization, helium-3, water ice, geological prospecting, space economy, ISRU, Artemis program, techno-economic analysis