The Nobel Prize 2025 in physics was awarded John Clarke, Michel Deveret and John Martinis on Tuesday (October 7) “for the discovery of macroscopic quantum mechanical tunneling and quantization of energy in the electrical district”.
In his first reaction after receiving the price of the new laureate of physics John Clarke said he was surprised to find that this year’s Nobel Prize was awarded in Physics.
“I am completely amazed, I never thought it would be the basis of the Nobel Prize,” he said.
At a press conference in today’s morning press conference, he was thinking about his price research: “Our discovery is somehow the basis of quantum computer technology.”
Nobel Prize 2025 in Physics: What were they awarded for?
This year’s Nobel Prize in Physics recognizes experiments that have shown how quantum tunneling can be observed on a macroscopic scale, including many particles.
The Nobel Prize Laureates in Physics for 2025, John Clarke, Michel H. Deveret and John M. Martinis, used a number of experiments to prove that the bizarre properties of the quantum world could be large enough to hold in their hand.
John Clarke, Michel Deveret and John Martinis – awarded this year’s Nobel Prize in Physics – built an experiment using a superconducting electrical district.
The chip that held this circuit was about a centimeter size. Previously, the tunneling and quantization of energy was studied in systems that had only a few particles.
Here, these phenomena appeared in a quantum mechanical system with billions of Cooper pairs that filled the entire superconductor on the chip.
In this way, the experiment took the quantum mechanical effects from the microscopic scale to the macroscopic.
What are quantum mechanics and tunneling?
Tunneling is a quantum mechanical process that means that this chance plays a role. Some types of atomic cores have a high, wide barrier, so it can take a long time for a piece of core to appear outside, while other types are easier to decompose.
The quantum mechanics describe the properties that are important on a scale that includes individual particles. In quantum physics, these phenomena are called microscopic, although they are much smaller than seen using an optical microscope.
This contrasts with macroscopic phenomena that consists of a large number of particles. For example, a daily ball is made of astronomical number of molecules and shows no quantum mechanical effects. We know that the ball will bounce every time he is worthy of the wall.
However, one particle sometimes passes through the equivalent barrier in its microscopic world and appears on the other side. This quantum mechanical phenomenon is called tunneling.
(Tagstotranslate) Nobel Price 2025 in Physics (T) Nobel Price 2025
