A team of physicists in Shanghai has made what they call the “world’s smallest cat video” using just 2,024 rubidium atoms, marking a leap in the ability to manipulate matter at the quantum level.

The video depicts Schrödinger’s cat, the famous 1929 thought experiment by Erwin Schrödinger, which illustrates the paradox of superposition—where a system can exist in multiple states at once until it is observed. In the video, atoms are arranged to form images representing key stages of the experiment.The work was carried out by researchers at the University of Science and Technology of China and published in a recent study.

Figure 1. World’s Smallest Cat Video.

AI and Optical Tweezers

In the video, each yellow dot corresponds to a rubidium atom within a 230-micron-wide array. Their positions were tracked by detecting fluorescence—the light they emit when illuminated by a laser.

The breakthrough relied on machine learning algorithms and optical tweezers—focused laser beams that act like microscopic tractor beams to move atoms [1]. Traditionally, rearranging atoms was slow, requiring them to be shifted one by one. Figure 1 shows World’s Smallest Cat Video.

The new AI-driven method instead calculates the best laser positions in real time, generating holograms that allow all 2,024 atoms to be rearranged simultaneously. The process is completed in just 60 milliseconds—a fraction of a second. To make the video viewable, the footage was slowed down by a factor of 33.

Overcoming a Major Bottleneck

This system tackles a key challenge in neutral-atom quantum computing, where scalability has been limited by the time-consuming process of atom manipulation. By keeping rearrangement time constant regardless of array size, the method is highly scalable.

According to the study, the technique achieved impressive precision: 99.97% accuracy for single-qubit operations, 99.5% for two-qubit operations, and 99.92% for state detection.

Toward Next-Generation Quantum Computers

Quantum computers differ from classical machines by using qubits, which can be 0, 1, or both simultaneously. This superposition gives them the potential to solve problems classical computers cannot. However, qubits are fragile and prone to error.

The researchers note that their AI-enabled rearrangement system could assemble defect-free arrays of tens of thousands of atoms with current technology, providing a critical tool for quantum error correction—a cornerstone for building reliable quantum computers.

“This protocol becomes a practical toolbox for scaling up quantum computing,” the team wrote, emphasizing that such advances bring the technology closer to solving real-world problems beyond the reach of classical machines.

Reference:

1. https://interestingengineering.com/science/scientists-create-smallest-cat-video

Cite this article:

Keerthana S (2025), Scientists Create ‘World’s Smallest Cat Video’ to Push Quantum Computing Forward, AnaTechMaz, pp.344