Microsoft has announced improvements in materials for its topological qubit system. In the new device, the company replaced aluminum with lead in the superconducting layer and altered the semiconductor structure, which increased the lifetime of the parity state from less than 10 ms to over 20 seconds, according to Ars Technica.
Separately, Atom Computing reported advancements in error correction using neutral atoms. The company demonstrated the operation of a toric code and maintained logical information for up to 90 correction cycles, including replacing lost atoms with backups. Atom Computing claims this is the first demonstration of multiple error corrections of this type on a neutral-atom architecture.