PhD student Seiji Armstrong, a recipient of the Prime Minister's Australia-Asia Award, worked with a team at the University of Tokyo to create a cluster of more than 10,000 quantum systems. The previous world record was 14.

Mr Armstrong said the size of the cluster of quantum systems was directly linked to the power of the quantum computer that could be built around it, with larger clusters providing greater capacity.

''It's a blank quantum circuit board, it's a resource for quantum computing, but we still have to investigate how to produce the best algorithms to print onto this circuit board," he said.

Mr Armstrong said quantum computers would be much faster and have much greater capacity than computers in use today.

"It will be able to solve problems that today's computers can't solve, even if today's computers are extremely fast," he said.

Mr Armstrong credited his colleague Nicolas Menicucci with coming up with the idea for the experiment.