The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the 2025 Nobel Prize in Physics to John Clarke, Michel H. Devoret and John M. Martinis for the discovery of macroscopic quantum mechanical tunnelling and energy quantisation in an electric circuit.
Their experiments on a chip revealed quantum physics in action.
A major question in physics is the maximum size of a system that can demonstrate quantum mechanical effects. This year’s Nobel Prize laureates conducted experiments with an electrical circuit in which they demonstrated both quantum mechanical tunnelling and quantised energy levels in a system big enough to be held in the hand.
Quantum mechanics allows a particle to move straight through a barrier, using a process called tunnelling. As soon as large numbers of particles are involved, quantum mechanical effects usually become insignificant. The laureates’ experiments demonstrated that quantum mechanical properties can be made concrete on a macroscopic scale.
Details about the Nobel Prize winners
John Clarke, University of California, Berkeley, USA; Michel H. Devoret, Yale University, New Haven, CT and University of California, Santa Barbara, USA; John M. Martinis University of California, Santa Barbara, USA.
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