2025 Nobel Prize in Physics Goes to Researchers Who Brought Quantum Mechanics into the Macroscale World

The Nobel Physics Prize of 2025 reaches researchers who demonstrated quantum tunneling on the chip

TO Lee Billings Edited And Vergano

IN 100th anniversary The year of quantum mechanics, which describes the universe in its smallest, most fundamental scale, 2025 Nobel Physics Prize I went to three pioneers in bringing his mysterious effects to the daily world.

Revered as one of the most successful scientific theories in history, quantum mechanics is the key to most modern transformational technologies, from supercomputers to smartphones. The theory is also sadly known for its numerous conflicting revelations: particles can also be waves, can exist simultaneously in the superpositions of multiple, seemingly conflicting states, and can have their own properties to ideally correlate – in amendments – so they are connected, regardless of how much they are from each other. The joint centennial of Vekhu, the Nobel Prize in Physics this year was awarded to three scientists – John Clark, Michel H. Devoret and John Martinis, who brought another bizarre microscopic effect called “ Quantum tunneling In the macroscopic world.

Quantum tunneling occurs when the particle passes directly through the impassable barrier to appear on the other side. This is similar to throw the ball into the wall and, instead of bouncing back, finding it unscathed on the other side, and the wall itself was completely hesitated. The effect is the basis for transistors, but it usually decreases for the assembly of many particles, so you never see that anyone went through walls and floors in everyday life. But in A series of experiments He performed at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1984 and 1985, Clarke, Devoret and Martinis Shown that the process can occur on a large scale than previously expected. (Connected, Clark also wrote Essay for Scientific American In 1994, on superconducting devices of quantum interference or squids, highly sensitive magnetometers used in medical diagnostic equipment and other high -performance equipment.)

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“It is worth remembering that for most of the 100-year history of this region, quantum theory was considered as a very small theory,” says Afraim Steinberg, a physicist from the University of Toronto, who studies quantum tunneling. Clark experiments, Deeret and Martini are “some of the first evidence that quantum mechanics, according to, describes not only the world of a very small, but even“ mesoscopic ”world of billions and billions of electrons, as well as potentially our larger world.”

Inspired Theoretical work Physics (and Possible Nobel laureate) Anthony Leggett, their experiments were based on electronic circuits built from superconductors, which can conduct current using current using There is no electrical resistanceThe field received electronic devices similar to chips that the Nobel Committee Noted in the statement They were “large enough to be held in the hand”, contained superconducting components divided into a thin barrier of non -conductive material. This agreement is known as Josephson Junkshenafter Nobel Prize that received a job British theoretical physicist Brian Josephson, who first proposed him in the early 1960s. Thanks to the exhaustive mapping and measuring the properties of the chain, Clark, Deeret and Martini were able to show how the electrons moving through the system act as if they are one particle, tunneling through the dividing barrier to fill the entire chain.

Their experimental system demonstrated only two different modes-one, in which the current was “caught” in a state of zero voltage, and the other, in which the current escaped this state through tunneling to show the voltage. This clearly demonstrated the quantized nature of the system in which only a certain amount of energy can be radiated or absorbed, as predicted by quantum mechanics.

“It is wonderful to be able to celebrate how this centuries-old quantum mechanics constantly offers new surprises,” said Olla Ericksson, chairman of the Nobel Physics Committee, in statement Announcement of the award. “It is also extremely useful because quantum mechanics is the basis of all digital technologies.”

The prize represents a triumph for the University of California; Clark remains at the University of California, Berkeley, and Deeret and Martini are at the University of California at Santa Barbar. (Devoret also holds a position at Yale University.)

Experiencing on his mobile phone to the Nobel Committee during the announcement of the prize, Clark “completely stunned” noted that the phenomenon that now made it made a Nobel laureate is also “one of the main reasons why the mobile phone works” and that “our discovery, in a sense, is the basis of quantum computing”.

Quantum computers have potential to deeply increase the speed and effectiveness of certain complex calculations that go beyond what classic computers can achieve. Their power comes from quantum bits or cubes, and not from bits used in classical calculations. Unlike bits that encode information as binary series 0S and 1S, the cubes in the superposition can encode not only 0 or 1, but also most of the values ​​between them. Access to all these intermediate values ​​requires the retention of the cubit in the superposition-only, cooling it almost to absolute zero and protection from all manners that causes an environmental noise error. Then you can organize confusing ensembles of cubes to solve more wide computing problems.

The boundary of the field is to harmonize a sufficient number of reliable, reliable cubes for creating systems that clearly demonstrate a “quantum advantage” compared to classical calculations. Governments, research institutes and private companies around the world spend tens of billions of dollars annually in pursuit of quantum advantageWith most systems relying on superconducting cubes, which are partially owed to their existence, with Clark, Devoret and Martinis with an innovative study.

“When you start combining many cubes, questions arise: how much can quantum confusion be? How large can you do? ” According to Irfan Siddika, the quantum -informational scientist from the California University of Berkeley, who worked closely with all three new laureates. “And most of this new wave of research is based on [the laureates’] Previously, answering this more fundamental question of whether the macroscopic system can be quantum mechanical. ”

For their work, which the Nobel quote describes as “the discovery of macroscopic quantum tunneling and energy quantum in an electric circuit,” researchers will distribute an equally prize of 11 million Swedish crowns (about 1.17 million dollars). This is a princely amount – but also a pale shadow of almost innumerable profits, which can accumulate if or when a high promise of quantum calculations, they finally helped to catalyze, finally was fulfilled.