Neutral-atom arrays and optical cavity quantum electrodynamics systems have developed in parallel as central pillars of modern experimental quantum science1–3. Although each platform has shown exceptional capabilities—such as high-fidelity quantum logic4–7 in atom arrays and strong light–matter coupling in cavities8–10—their combination holds promise for realizing fast and non-destructive atom measurement11, building large-scale quantum networks12–17 and engineering hybrid atom–photon Hamiltonians18–20. However, so far, experiments integrating the two platforms have been limited to spatially interfacing the entire atom array with one global cavity mode21–26, a configuration that constrains addressability, parallelism and scalability. Here we introduce the cavity-array microscope, an experimental platform where each individual atom is strongly coupled to its own individual cavity across a two-dimensional array of over 40 modes. Our approach requires no nanophotonic elements26,27, and instead uses a free-space cavity geometry with intra-cavity lenses28,29 to realize above-unity peak cooperativity with micrometre-scale mode waists and spacings, compatible with typical atom-array length scales while keeping atoms far from dielectric surfaces. We achieve homogeneous atom–cavity coupling and show fast, non-destructive, parallel readout on millisecond timescales, including through a fibre array as a proof of principle for networking applications30. As an outlook, we realize a next-generation iteration of the platform with over 500 cavities and a nearly 10-fold improvement in finesse. Our work unlocks the regime of many-cavity quantum electrodynamics and opens an unexplored frontier of large-scale quantum networking with atom arrays.
