Superfluid helium qubit could slash quantum error rates 100-fold

Physicists at the University of Surrey published a design on 1 October 2026 for what they say is the first qubit based on a superfluid, a frictionless quantum liquid formed when helium is chilled to within a hair of absolute zero. The team's Superfluid Helium Oscillator Qubit (SHOQ) encodes quantum information in the collective motion of helium atoms rather than in a lone superconducting circuit, which the group argues should shield the qubit from the electromagnetic noise that dominates error rates in state-of-the-art quantum processors. Their theoretical calculations indicate the SHOQ could operate with error rates roughly 100 times lower than conventional transmon-style superconducting qubits, a step that would dramatically ease the overhead of quantum error correction and bring useful fault-tolerant machines closer. The announcement landed on a busy day for the field: D-Wave opened a beta of a 21-qubit gate-model simulator with dual-rail erasure emulation, and Alice & Bob with ENS Lyon demonstrated a DC-biased SQUID architecture for stabilising cat qubits using microvolt-scale voltages instead of microwave pumps.