Opinion Express View on Physics Nobel: Small is big

When the great American physicist, Richard Feynman, made his famous remark, “nobody understands quantum mechanics”, he was only stating the limits of human intuition in understanding the ways of sub-atomic particles. Quantum mechanics forces humans to jettison the quest for familiarity when dealing with the universe at its smallest, most fundamental scale. However, over the years, the insights of quantum systems have informed the working of some of the most transformative technologies. This year’s Nobel Prize winners in Physics are among the scientists who have chipped away at the indeterminacy of sub-atomic particles. Over the last four decades, John Clarke, a British physicist based at the University of California at Berkeley, Michel Devoret, a French scientist who has worked at Yale University, and John Martinis, of the University of California Santa Barbara, have led a “series of experiments to demonstrate that the bizarre properties of the quantum world can be made concrete in a system big enough to be held in the hand”.

The studies revolutionised the understanding of quantum tunnelling — the ability of particles, such as electrons, to move or tunnel through barriers. This is somewhat akin to throwing a ball onto a wall and finding it across the other side of the structure, which remains unscathed. Before the trio began their experiments, the ability of single particles to tunnel was known. Clarke, Martinis and Devoret demonstrated that the phenomenon could take place at a far greater scale; they demonstrated the tunnelling effect in a simple electrical circuit incorporating superconductors, which allows current to flow without resistance.

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The discovery paved the way for experiments that tested precise quantum physics on a silicon chip, and laid the ground for next-generation digital technology. As the Nobel Committee noted, their experiments “revealed quantum physics in action”.