This year's Nobel Prize in physics went to three scientists who experimentally proved that quantum phenomena can be realized even in small, hand-held electrical circuits. The scientific community's prediction that this year's laureates would come from the field of quantum mechanics, given that last year's physics prize went to artificial intelligence (AI), proved correct.
The Nobel Committee at Sweden's Karolinska Institute announced on the 7th (local time) that "this year's Nobel Prize in physics will be awarded to John Clarke, 83, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley); Michel Devoret, 72, a professor at Yale University; and John Martinis, 67, a professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UC Santa Barbara)."
Professor John Clarke, born in Cambridge, United Kingdom, received his doctorate from the University of Cambridge. Professor Martinis was born in the United States and received his doctorate from UC Berkeley, and Professor Devoret, born in Paris, France, received his doctorate from Paris-Sud University (now Paris-Saclay University). When they conducted the experiments that won this year's Nobel Prize at UC Berkeley, Clarke was the supervising professor, Martinis was a doctoral student, and Devoret was a postdoctoral researcher from France.
They designed a "Josephson junction" structure—separated by an insulating barrier—in an electronic circuit made of superconductors and conducted experiments. A superconductor is a material whose electrical resistance disappears at a certain temperature. They confirmed that charge carriers passing through a superconductor behave like a "single particle" filling the entire circuit and exhibit quantum tunneling, in which they penetrate the insulating barrier that blocks current and move to the other side. They also observed energy quantization, in which the circuit absorbs and emits only specific amounts of energy.
Quantum tunneling is a quantum-mechanical phenomenon in which particles such as electrons or atomic nuclei probabilistically pass through an energy barrier that cannot be overcome in classical mechanics. Because particles have wave-like properties, this phenomenon appears in a wide range of natural phenomena and advanced technologies, including stellar nuclear fusion, the operating principle of flash memory, and scanning tunneling microscopy (STM).
The Nobel Committee said, "Their research is the cornerstone of future quantum technology," and noted that "it has laid the foundation for next-generation technologies such as quantum computers, quantum cryptography, and quantum sensors."
This year's Nobel physics laureates will share prize money of 11 million Swedish kronor (about 1.655 billion won).