Recently, more than 200 attendees came together at the University of Toronto (U of T) to honour Profs. Mark Saffman, Antoine Browaeys and Mikhail Lukin, winners of the 2026 John Stewart Bell Prize for Research on Fundamental Issues in Quantum Mechanics and Their Applications.
The three researchers were recognized for their work on the scaling and programming of neutral atoms to act as ‘qubits’ — units of information that enable quantum computing — using optical tweezer arrays. An optical tweezer is a laser light ‘container’ that can hold individual neutral atoms, which allows them to be controlled.
The Bell Prize ceremony took place during CQIQC-XI, a week-long international conference that brought researchers working in many areas of quantum information science (QIS) together for talks, poster sessions, workshops and more.
Held biannually at the Fields Institute for Research in Mathematical Sciences in Toronto, CQIQC-XI is a broad science conference for international researchers and students in QIS. Bell Prize ceremony attendees included many of the 130 conference participants. The CQIQC-XI conference attracted around 60 poster presenters and 40 speakers including prominent invited speakers from international research institutions.
Bell Prize committee includes prominent global scientists
Paul Brumer, a U of T professor of chemistry and vice chair of the Bell Prize committee, kicked off the ceremony with an introduction to the history of the award and the process of selecting awardees.
Brumer acknowledged the selection committee members Immanuel Bloch (Max-Planck Institute), David DiVincenzo (Forschungszentrum Jülich), Steven Girvin (Yale University) and Yasunobu Nakamura (University of Tokyo). He described the lengthy process of selecting both committee members and award recipients.
Since it was first awarded in 2009, the prestigious award has been given nine times. Three Bell Prize recipients have gone on to win the Nobel Prize in Physics: Anton Zeilinger, Michel Devoret and John Martinis.
The award is named after prominent Irish physicist John Stewart Bell, whose derivation of “Bell’s theorem” transformed quantum mechanics. The Bell Prize is administered and managed by the Centre for Quantum Information and Quantum Control (CQIQC) at U of T.
Award celebrates recent and novel achievements
At the Bell Prize ceremony, co-chair Boris Braverman, a U of T assistant professor in the Department of Physics, recalled when he started working in this field about 15 years ago as a graduate student.
“Neutral atoms at the time were seen as a promising platform but one which really wasn’t reaching its potential,” said Braverman, who added that while it was clear that neutral atoms were excellent qubits, they could not yet be entangled — prepared in a state where they are linked together in a quantum manner — in a high-quality way. Quantum entanglement is an essential resource for quantum computers obtaining advantage over classical computers.
But since this time, research has progressed toward neutral atoms demonstrating higher-quality entanglement, entanglement at scale and increasingly complex quantum circuits.
“The work of the last 15, 10, or even five, years, really represented by the three award recipients, has been pathbreaking in this domain,” Braverman said. “The Bell Prize, in contrast to a lot of other scientific prizes, really aims to recognize research that is very recent, and areas that are very active.”
The Bell Prize honours discoveries made no more than six years prior to the time of nomination.
Recipients note the progress in the field
As part of his talk, Browaeys discussed the past several decades of work in this field, from a 2001 study in which researchers discovered how to use tightly-focused optical tweezers to isolate one neutral atom at a time, to his recent discovery that neutral atoms can be trapped at scale to perform large-scale quantum simulations.
Browaeys, a research director at Institut d'Optique at the French National Centre for Scientific Research, highlighted that experiments in this field that were seen as “bizarre” at first, such as work focusing on whether a neutral atom qubit can be moved, are now recognized as part of the crucial pathway toward using these platforms for quantum computing.
Lukin, a professor at Harvard University, also spoke about his work in the field and reflected on its evolution from when he started his career in the late 1990s, saying the ideas and dreams he has had over his career are starting to feel more tangible.
He told the audience that he feels, for the first time, there is a direct line of sight to realizing useful quantum computers. “There is a lot of work to be done, a lot of challenges, but nevertheless…things are coming together and becoming real,” Lukin said.
The work Lukin was recognized for showed that neutral atoms can be moved by laser tweezers without losing data, allowing them to be grouped together to become resistant to errors.
The third recipient, Saffman, a professor of physics at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, was recognized for his pioneering work on the “Rydberg blockade,” a platform that allows neutral atoms to interact and entangle. His work has been groundbreaking in showing the feasibility of implementing digital quantum circuits with neutral atoms.
Saffman reflected on the growth of this research area since he first read about the Rydberg blockade effect 25 years ago and became interested in pursuing it.
"It was a very small community for quite a few years, but it’s really expanded greatly in the last five years or so, and there’s an enormous number of groups working on this,” he said. “There are now more than 20, maybe even 30, companies worldwide focused on this.”