Toward Large Nonradiating Qubits: When Quantum Engineering Meets Photonics

Over the past few decades, significant progress has been made toward quantum computers ‐ machines designed to exploit the full complexity of many‐particle quantum systems for tasks such as drug discovery, molecular simulation, cryptography, and including applications in quantum simulation of astrophysical and cosmological systems. Among the most promising platforms are superconducting qubits. However, a central challenge remains: qubits readily lose coherence by radiating energy into their environment. Recent advances in superconducting circuits demonstrate that nonradiating qubit architectures, inspired by photonics and metamaterials, can suppress such losses and dramatically extend qubit lifetimes. This review highlights two key concepts enabling radiation suppression in large (wavelength‐scale) qubits: the anapole state and bound states in the continuum (BICs). By engineering currents and fields for destructive interference, these states confine electromagnetic energy to the qubit's near field and prevent radiation into the far field. We survey the theoretical foundations of anapole and BIC qubits, recent experimental implementations in superconducting platforms, and their implications for scalable quantum computing. We discuss how harnessing these nonradiating modes, as demonstrated in large qubits, yields unprecedented coherence times while addressing the practical challenges of control, readout, and fabrication. We conclude by outlining opportunities for future research at the intersection of quantum engineering and photonics, where tailored interference and symmetry principles may pave the way toward high‐coherence, large‐scale quantum processors. This work addresses a key open question in qubit design: How can a superconducting qubit be scaled to the wavelength regime without suffering from parasitic radiation losses?