Optical tweezer arrays1,2 have transformed atomic and molecular physics, now forming the backbone for a range of leading experiments in quantum computing3–8, simulation1,9–12 and metrology13–15. Typical experiments trap tens to hundreds of atomic qubits and, recently, systems with around 1,000 atoms were realized without defining qubits or demonstrating coherent control16–18. However, scaling to thousands of atomic qubits with long coherence times and low-loss and high-fidelity imaging is an outstanding challenge and critical for progress in quantum science, particularly towards quantum error correction (QEC)19,20. Here we experimentally realize an array of optical tweezers trapping more than 6,100 neutral atoms in around 12,000 sites, simultaneously surpassing state-of-the-art performance for several metrics that underpin the success of the platform. Specifically, while scaling to such a large number of atoms, we demonstrate a coherence time of 12.6(1) s, a record for hyperfine qubits in an optical tweezer array. We show room-temperature trapping lifetimes of about 23 min, enabling record-high imaging survival of 99.98952(1)% with an imaging fidelity of more than 99.99%. We present a plan for zone-based quantum computing5,21 and demonstrate necessary coherence-preserving qubit transport and pick-up/drop-off operations on large spatial scales, characterized through interleaved randomized benchmarking. Our results, along with recent developments8,22–24, indicate that universal quantum computing and QEC with thousands to tens of thousands of physical qubits could be a near-term prospect.
