Kai Voges gets €5.8m to combine ultracold molecules with Rydberg atoms for quantum computing

[Frost Jay]

Physicist Kai Voges has set up a research group at Leibniz University Hannover that will combine ultracold molecules, used as qubits, with Rydberg atoms, The Quantum Insider reports. The five year project, called HybriQCS, has 5.8 million euros from Germany's Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space through an early career competition. It runs from March 2026 to February 2031, with the goal of first gate operations within five years

The idea is to combine the strengths of two very different systems. Voges explained: "We therefore aim to combine the stability of molecules with the speed of Rydberg atoms." Molecules can hold quantum information for a very long time but interact weakly, while Rydberg atoms interact strongly and quickly but are less stable. "As qubits, molecules have long coherence times, which means they can store quantum information for seconds or even minutes," he said

Voges has worked on both sides of the problem. He previously assembled molecules from single atoms in Hannover and cooled whole molecules at Imperial College London. He has also proposed a noise cancelling dual clock design. The group sits within Quantum Valley Lower Saxony and plans collaborations with ion trap groups and the national metrology institute, PTB. A spin-off company is being considered

Coming in the same week as the Stuttgart Rydberg records and Germany's big hardware competition, it adds to the picture of a very active German quantum research scene. Hybrid systems are a long term bet. Combining two kinds of quantum objects is technically very hard, but if it works it could offer the best of both. Five years to first gate operations is a realistic target for something this ambitious

Are hybrid quantum systems the future, or will one technology win outright? And does Germany now have the strongest quantum research base in Europe?

Kai Voges Leads €5.8 Million Research Project on Hybrid Quantum Systemsthequantuminsider.com

[TheRizz00]

Coherence times of seconds or minutes are remarkable. Most superconducting qubits manage microseconds to milliseconds

If molecules can be controlled well, that is a huge advantage for storing information. The challenge is making them interact quickly enough to be useful, which is where the Rydberg atoms come in

[VidiTechnica]

At least this is a better use of a big research grant than announcing that quantum computing will replace every laptop by next Tuesday. The field needs patient investment in hardware, control systems and error correction, not just claims about quantum supremacy. Even if the hybrid approach turns out not to scale, the experimental techniques developed along the way could benefit other quantum platforms.

[Highland Builder]

Early career funding of this size is great to see. Giving a young researcher five years and real money to build a group is how you get breakthroughs

Too many talented researchers leave academia because they cannot get secure funding. This kind of programme helps keep them

[BiasField82]

Germany's research base is very strong, but the UK still holds its own. Imperial, where Voges worked, Oxford, Cambridge and Durham all have world class atomic physics groups

European collaboration between the two would be the best outcome. Brexit made some of those collaborations harder for a while, though rejoining Horizon Europe has helped

[Brittle Ronan]

Meanwhile, the rest of us are still waiting for a quantum computer to do something useful without requiring an entire laboratory full of specialised equipment. These experiments are necessary groundwork, though. Nobody should expect €5.8 million to produce a fault-tolerant machine overnight, but a convincing demonstration of scalable hybrid operations would be a worthwhile result in itself.

[TheRizz]

One potential advantage that deserves more attention is the ability to use different physical degrees of freedom for different jobs. Molecular states could provide a flexible way to encode information, while highly excited Rydberg states could mediate strong interactions between particles. That separation might eventually help with architectures where storing information and processing it have very different requirements. The challenge is making the handoff fast and precise enough to be useful.

[Rogue Di]

The deciding metric for me will be useful operations per unit of time, with errors included. Long coherence is valuable because it gives the system more room to work, but that advantage disappears if every interaction risks corrupting the state. If Voges's team can show repeatable entanglement, low control overhead and a credible path to adding more qubits, then this €5.8 million could be money very well spent.

[DarkMerchant]

Seconds or minutes of coherence would be a massive advantage if those figures hold up under practical operating conditions. The real test is whether they can preserve that coherence while performing gates and connecting multiple qubits, not just keeping a single system stable. Still, combining two platforms with such different strengths is a clever approach.

[Glacier53]

I'm not completely sold on the idea that combining platforms automatically gives you the best of both worlds. Hybrid systems can inherit the engineering problems of both technologies while adding a whole new layer of interface complexity. The proposal needs to demonstrate a measurable benefit over the strongest individual platform, otherwise it risks becoming a technically fascinating solution in search of a problem.

[ChipShopLad]

Quantum computing news has become a competition in increasingly impressive numbers, so I'm glad this project has a specific physical idea behind it. Molecules have complicated internal structures, which can be a nuisance for control but potentially useful for encoding information. If they can exploit that complexity without making the system impossibly difficult to operate, there's a genuine opportunity here.

[QuantumLeap11]

Hybrid systems remind me of classical computers, which combine fast processors with slower but larger memory. A quantum version with fast Rydberg atoms and long lived molecules makes intuitive sense. Different technologies for different jobs is how most engineering works

[SyntaxMage43]

People keep comparing coherence times across platforms as if the longest number automatically wins. It doesn't. A qubit that stays coherent for ten minutes but takes ages to initialise or suffers unreliable gates might be less useful than one that lasts milliseconds and can execute operations extremely well. The whole system has to be judged together.

[Darren51]

€5.8 million is a serious vote of confidence, but quantum computing has a long history of impressive lab demonstrations that struggle to scale. I'd like to see some concrete milestones: reliable molecule preparation, repeatable entangling operations, and error rates that improve as the system grows. A working handful of hybrid qubits would be more convincing than another headline about theoretical potential.

[Slate Fraction]

The interesting part here is the division of labour. Ultracold molecules offer rich internal states that could store quantum information, while Rydberg atoms have strong, controllable interactions that are useful for entangling qubits. If Voges can get the interface between them right, this could solve a problem that neither platform handles particularly well on its own.

[Sandworm]

This is the sort of quantum research I like seeing funded. Instead of trying to force one technology to do everything, they're combining components with complementary properties. It's a bit like building a computer with specialised processors rather than demanding that one chip handle every task. Of course, getting the components to communicate efficiently is where the fun (and the headaches) begin.