The 2025 Nobel Prize in Physics is awarded jointly to John Clarke, Michel H. Devoret and John M. Martinis,“for their discovery of the macroscopic tunneling effect in quantum mechanics and the quantization of energy in an electric circuit“.
Michel Devoret, a French physicist, is a former researcher at IRAMIS/SPEC, where he founded with Daniel Estève and Cristian Urbina the Quantronics group at the Orme des Merisiers laboratory (CEA-Saclay). The group’s main achievements include the invention of the electron pump, direct observation of the charge of Cooper pairs and the development of a superconducting quantum bit, the Quantronium.
See the highlight of 2002: “Nanosciences: CEA researchers have produced the first electronic circuit that could serve as the building block for a future quantum processor“.
Michel Devoret moved to Yale University in 2002, where he continued his work in collaboration with his original team.
Today, the “quantronics” group (QUANTum physics and electrRONICS) deals with the physics and applications of electrical circuits whose properties can only be understood if their collective degrees of freedom, such as charges and magnetic fluxes, are treated by quantum mechanics.