A trio of US-based scientists, John Clarke of the UK, Michel Devoret of France, and John Martinis of the US, have won the Nobel Prize in physics for their work in the field of quantum mechanical tunnelling, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced in Stockholm on Tuesday.
Why was the prize awarded?
The prize was awarded for “the discovery of macroscopic quantum mechanical tunnelling and energy quantisation in an electric circuit,” according to the award-giving body.
“This year’s Nobel Prize in Physics has provided opportunities for developing the next generation of quantum technology, including quantum cryptography, quantum computers, and quantum sensors,” it said in a statement.
On the Nobel Prize account on X, formerly Twitter, it was explained that the scientists’ “experiment took quantum mechanical effects from a microscopic scale to a macroscopic one.”
The scientists carried out experiments in the mid-1980s with an electronic circuit built of superconductors. The experiments showed that quantum mechanical properties could be made concrete on a much larger scale. (DW)