“The 2025 Nobel Prize lectures in physics by John Clarke, Michel H. Devoret and John M. Martinis” will take place on Monday, December 8, starting at 9 a.m.
- John Clarke: From SLUGs to macroscopic quantum phenomena
- Michel H. Devoret: From macroscopic quantum phenomena to artificial atoms
- John M. Martinis: Prehistoric Superconducting Qubits
Michel Devoret was a scientist at SPEC (Condensed Matter Physics Unit) for 24 years, from 1978 to 2002. Upon returning from his postdoctoral fellowship at Berkeley in 1984, he founded the SPEC quantronics group with Daniel Estève and Christian Urbina. In 1984, John Martinis joined them at CEA-DSM/SPSRM for a postdoctoral fellowship, as did John Clarke on sabbatical.
He continued his work within the quantronic group until 2002, when he joined Yale University, while continuing to collaborate closely with his original team.
His research has focused primarily on “mesoscopic physics,” studying quantum electronic effects in electronic circuits. With the development of microwave technologies, he contributed to the creation of quantronium at SPEC, the first superconducting qubit that is well decoupled from the external circuit while remaining connected and therefore measurable at all times. This was a major step forward in the development of current quantum technologies towards quantum computing.