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Oxford team entangles distant ions of two elements across a quantum network

Oxford team entangles distant ions of two elements across a quantum network

New Capabilities

Physicists held four atoms in a shared quantum state for about 10 seconds, far longer than the network links that created it

October 13th, 2026: Physical Review Letters publishes Oxford's mixed-species quantum network

Overview

Updated Yesterday

Physicists at the University of Oxford entangled four atoms of two different elements across two separate laboratory nodes, holding the shared state for about 10 seconds. The work was published in Physical Review Letters on October 13.

Entanglement between distant atoms usually decays within milliseconds, which limits how long remote devices can coordinate. The Oxford group split the job: strontium atoms create the network link through light, then local operations hand the entanglement to calcium atoms. Calcium is less sensitive to magnetic noise, so the state lasts seconds instead of milliseconds.

Why it matters

Distant quantum computers need entanglement that survives long enough to compute. This extends that window from milliseconds to 10 seconds.

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Key Indicators

10 s
Entanglement storage time
The shared state survived about 10 seconds in calcium memory qubits, versus milliseconds for the strontium network links.
4
Atoms entangled across the network
Two strontium and two calcium ions held in a shared quantum state across two nodes.
≈1,000×
Storage gain over network qubits
The network qubits held coherence for about 8 milliseconds; calcium memory held the stored entanglement for more than 10 seconds.

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People Involved

Dougal Main
Dougal Main
Lead author of the Physical Review Letters paper
Physicist at the University of Oxford Department of Physics
 Gabriel Araneda
Gabriel Araneda
Co-author of the Physical Review Letters paper
Physicist at the University of Oxford Department of Physics

Organizations Involved

UO
University of Oxford Department of Physics
University research department
Where the mixed-species quantum network was built and run

Oxford's physics department hosts the ion trapping group that built the two-node quantum network.

Timeline

1 event Latest: October 13th, 2026 · 1 week ago

  1. Physical Review Letters publishes Oxford's mixed-species quantum network

    Latest Publication

    Four ions of two elements entangled across two nodes; state stored about 10 seconds.

Scenarios

1

Oxford quantum network scales past two nodes

Possible Resolves by End of 2027

Discussed by: Paper's authors, whose stated future work includes scaling the number of nodes

The architecture separates roles: strontium handles photon emission for networking, calcium provides long-lived memory. The seconds-long storage gives time to refresh older entanglement links, which is the requirement for adding nodes. A three-or-more-node demonstration would move the network from a research rig toward a usable distributed system.

2

Mixed-species network runs a small distributed computation

Possible Resolves by Q2 2028

Discussed by: Gabriel Araneda and collaborators, who cite distributed quantum computing as a target

With entanglement stored about 10 seconds, multi-step protocols become feasible, such as teleporting a quantum gate or running a simple distributed algorithm across the two nodes. That would be the first use of the network as a working distributed computer rather than a static entanglement demonstration.

3

Oxford extends entanglement storage past a minute

Possible Resolves by Q2 2028

Discussed by: The research team, which notes calcium's lower sensitivity to magnetic-field noise

The team already took storage from milliseconds using strontium to about 10 seconds using calcium. Choosing quantum states even less sensitive to magnetic noise, or layering on error suppression, could push coherence toward minutes. Longer storage would widen the window for computations and for comparing atomic clocks across remote sites.

Historical Context

3 moments from history that rhyme with this story — and how they unfolded.

2015

Loophole-free Bell test, Delft (2015)

A team led by Ronald Hanson at Delft University of Technology entangled the electron spin states of two diamond defects in separate laboratories, closing both the detection and locality loopholes that had let skeptics explain away earlier tests.

Then

Settled decades of debate over whether quantum mechanics permits the nonlocal correlations that entanglement implies.

Now

Established entanglement between distant matter qubits as a practical resource, becoming a foundation of quantum network research.

Why this matters now

Like the Oxford result, it showed entanglement can be created between matter qubits in separate locations, the core operation any quantum network must perform.

2017

Micius satellite entanglement distribution (2017)

Jian-Wei Pan's group at the University of Science and Technology of China entangled pairs of photons using the Micius satellite, later demonstrating intercontinental quantum key distribution between ground stations in Asia and Europe.

Then

Showed entanglement-based signals can bridge global distances.

Now

Remains a blueprint for satellite-based quantum communication.

Why this matters now

It proved entanglement works over long distances, but with photons whose states fade quickly. Oxford's trapped ions add the long-lived memory that photons lack, keeping the entangled state steady for seconds.

April 2026

Deterministic entanglement over 10 km fiber (2026)

A group led by Liu reported in Nature entangling two trapped ions over 10 kilometers of optical fiber, reestablishing the entangled link every 450 milliseconds and storing the state up to 547 milliseconds. Ultraviolet photons from the ions were converted to telecom wavelengths to travel the fiber.

Then

First deterministic entanglement over metropolitan-scale fiber, achieved by refreshing links faster than they decayed.

Now

A competing route to the same goal of reliable, long-distance entanglement, plus a technique for moving photons through standard fiber.

Why this matters now

Both groups attack the same bottleneck of keeping distant matter qubits entangled long enough to be useful. Oxford reaches a storage time roughly 20 times longer by assigning networking to strontium and memory to calcium.

Sources

(5)
University of Oxford Department of Physics Human Progress The Good News Brief Interesting Engineering Nature