Physicists at the University of Surrey have worked out, on paper and in simulation, a qubit made from superfluid helium that they predict would make errors about 100 times less often than the superconducting qubits used in today’s quantum computers. No such device exists yet. The result is a design and a set of calculations, published in npj Quantum Information in September.
The team calls it the Superfluid Helium Oscillator Quantum device, or SHOQ, and says a prototype is now being developed to test whether the prediction survives contact with a laboratory.
A qubit built from frictionless liquid
According to Quantum Zeitgeist’s report, SHOQ uses superfluid helium-3, a liquid that flows without friction, inside a microfluidic architecture. The central argument is that helium is charge-neutral. The dominant superconducting design, the transmon, was engineered specifically to reduce its sensitivity to charge noise, a sign of how much trouble stray electrical fluctuation causes; a qubit with no charge to disturb would sidestep that class of problem from the start.
The paper itself, titled “Towards a micromechanical qubit based on quantized oscillations in superfluid helium,” has a page in the journal, and an earlier preprint summarized by AlphaXiv describes the concept as pairing a superfluid weak link with a mechanical element, giving quantized oscillations that can encode a qubit. The preprint suggests micron-scale devices and a potential coherence time on the order of milliseconds, and says the quantum regime is within reach across a range of designs, while noting that experimental validation is still pending.
Superfluid helium-3 is not a convenient material. It becomes a superfluid at roughly 2.5 millikelvin, according to its general reference entry, and the discovery of its superfluid phases in the 1970s earned the 1996 Nobel Prize in Physics. The preprint says the device would operate at the millikelvin temperatures such states require, a regime already familiar to quantum hardware groups that run dilution refrigerators. The same reference entry adds that helium-3 is a fermion that becomes superfluid by forming pairs, much as electrons do in a superconductor, and that its superfluid phases are among the purest condensed matter states possible because every other substance freezes out at those temperatures. Purity is part of the appeal for a device whose whole premise is a medium quiet enough to hold a quantum state.
The 100-fold figure and its limits
The 100-fold figure is a modeled prediction, and Nanowerk’s report states it that way: the research predicts error rates approximately 100 times lower than conventional superconducting qubits. The coverage does not break down which kind of error that figure refers to, and the status of the work is theoretical, so the number describes what the calculations say a working SHOQ could do, not anything measured on hardware.
Dr. Priya Sharma, a research fellow in hybrid quantum systems at Surrey, described the contribution as bringing known pieces together for the first time in a microfluidic device and working out the specific details that could let it function as a qubit. As quoted by Nanowerk, she said the team took what is already known about superfluid helium and quantum technologies and turned it into an educated design.
Surrey led the work in partnership with Professor Jens Koch of Northwestern University, who is one of the original developers of the transmon qubit, Nanowerk reports. That pairing is notable because the benchmark SHOQ is compared against was co-created by one of its collaborators.
From design to hardware
Building a device is the open step. Nanowerk reports that the team is developing a prototype, supported by an IAA Commercialisation Fellowship, to test the predictions experimentally. Until a prototype exists, the 100-fold figure cannot be checked against measured coherence times, and superconducting qubits keep a long head start: the transmon article records on-chip coherence times from tens of microseconds to roughly 0.3 milliseconds with tantalum, figures that are real measurements, not forecasts.
Dr. Eran Ginossar, an associate professor at Surrey, framed the aim modestly. As Quantum Zeitgeist quotes him, one type of qubit does not necessarily need to do everything, and SHOQ could complement other qubit technologies in larger quantum systems rather than replace them.
The reasoning behind that modesty is that quantum computers need huge numbers of qubits working together, and each additional error multiplies the overhead of correcting it. A qubit with far fewer errors would cut that overhead, but only if the helium device can be made, cooled, read out and coupled to other components at scale, none of which has been demonstrated. The publication date matters for judging how early this is: the paper appeared on September 8, 2026, so the prototype work is only beginning to be visible. Whether SHOQ’s modeled advantage holds once a physical oscillator is built is the question the Surrey prototype is meant to answer.
This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.
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