The Nobel Prize in physics and the contribution of Ukrainian scientists to the understanding of quantum phenomena, in particular the behavior of macro

📝 Abstract

The Nobel Prize in Physics 2025 has been awarded to John Clarke, John Martinis, and Michel Devoret for “the discovery of macroscopic quantum mechanical tunnelling and energy quantisation in an electric circuit”. Their achievements open up possibilities for developing the next generation of quantum technologies, including quantum cryptography, quantum computers, and quantum sensors. This article explains physical grounds of these discoveries and describes the role of earlier studies of weak superconductivity and macroscopic quantum systems by other scientists, highlighting the contribution of researchers from the B.I. Verkin Institute for Low Temperature Physics and Engineering of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, who obtained pioneering results in this field. The paper includes short biographies of the Nobel laureates.

💡 Analysis

The Nobel Prize in Physics 2025 has been awarded to John Clarke, John Martinis, and Michel Devoret for “the discovery of macroscopic quantum mechanical tunnelling and energy quantisation in an electric circuit”. Their achievements open up possibilities for developing the next generation of quantum technologies, including quantum cryptography, quantum computers, and quantum sensors. This article explains physical grounds of these discoveries and describes the role of earlier studies of weak superconductivity and macroscopic quantum systems by other scientists, highlighting the contribution of researchers from the B.I. Verkin Institute for Low Temperature Physics and Engineering of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, who obtained pioneering results in this field. The paper includes short biographies of the Nobel laureates.

📄 Content

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Oleh G. TURUTANOV —
Candidate of Sciences in
Physics and Math (PhD),
Senior researcher in the Dept. of Superconducting and Mesoscopic Structures of B.I. Verkin Institute for Low Temperature Physics and
Engineering of the NAS of Ukraine, Senior researcher in the Dept. of Experimental Physics at the
Faculty of Mathematics, Physics and Informatics at Comenius
University Bratislava (Slovakia) ORCID:
https://orcid.org/0000-0002- 8673-136X THE NOBEL PRIZE IN PHYSICS AND
THE CONTRIBUTION OF UKRAINIAN SCIENTISTS TO THE UNDERSTANDING OF QUANTUM PHENOMENA,
IN PARTICULAR THE BEHAVIOR
OF MACROSCOPIC QUANTUM SYSTEMS The 2025 Nobel Prize in Physics

The Nobel Prize in Physics 2025 has been awarded to three researchers: the British-born physicist John Clarke, the American experimenter John Martinis, and the French theoretician Michel Devoret “for the discovery of macroscopic quantum mechanical tunnelling and energy quantisation in an electric cir- cuit.” As stated in the press release of the Nobel Committee, “this year’s Nobel Prize laureates conducted experiments with an electrical circuit in which they demonstrated both quantum mechanical tunnelling and quantised energy levels in a system big enough to be held in the hand.” Their achievements “open up possibilities for developing the next generation of quantum tech- nologies, including quantum cryptography, quantum computers, and quan- tum sensors.” This article places these discoveries in a historical context and highlights the role of earlier studies by other scientists — including research- ers of the B.I. Verkin Institute for Low Temperature Physics and Engineering of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, who obtained pioneering re- sults in this field.

Keywords: 2025 Nobel Prize in Physics, John Clarke, John Martinis, Michel De- voret, macroscopic quantum tunneling, quantum technologies.

When big guys act like the little ones — if you don’t mess with them

As always, each autumn, following the announcement of the Nobel Prize in Physics, the entire physical community actively discusses the nature of the research that led the laureates to this prestigious award. Professional scientists and popularizers of science strive to convey to the general public the significance of the results PAPERS & REVIEWS 21

obtained and explain how they may influence the further development of science. In 2025, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded the prize to two experimental physicists: the British-born John Clarke, who spent most of his career in the United States, and the American John Martinis, as well as to the French theoretical physicist Michel Devoret “for the discovery of macroscopic quantum tunnel- ing and energy quantization in an electrical cir- cuit.”1 Their key work was carried out in the mid- 1980s at the University of California, Berkeley, which has produced 75 Nobel laureates. At that time, all three researchers worked together in John Clarke’s group, in which John Martinis was his graduate student, and Michel Devoret joined as a postdoctoral researcher after defending his disser- tation at the French Nuclear Research Center in Saclay.
The research of this year’s Nobel laureates builds on earlier theoretical work by Anthony Leggett, who received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2003 for his “pioneering contributions to the theory of superconductors and superfluids,” but most of his subsequent work has focused specifi- cally on quantum physics of macroscopic systems and condensed matter. The theoretical prediction of the possibility of macroscopic quantum tunnel- ing is associated with Leggett’s name [1], alt- hough Ukrainian theoretical physicists Yulii Ivanchenko and Lev Zil’berman from the Donetsk Institute for Physics and Engineering had already calculated the probability of such a process in a current-driven Josephson junction ten years ear- lier [2]. Their work was known to the aforemen- tioned Nobel laureates and was even cited in the official scientific justification of the Nobel Com- mittee2.
Fascinating details of the Nobel laureates’ scien- tific biographies, accounts of the sometimes- dramatic debates, and stories of numerous related scientific events involving both widely known and lesser-known researchers can be found in the

1 The Nobel Prize in Physics 2025. Press release. https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/2025/press- release/
2 Scientific background to the Nobel Prize in Physics 2025. https://surl.lu/onoqnc
memoirs and interviews of the laureates3, pub- lished in various scientific journals and popular periodicals. In the context of this series of works, it is ap- propriate to mention the chronology of discoveries in superconductivity, which is closely related to quantum mechanics, as well as to highlight the no- table role played by the B.I. Verkin Institute for Low Tem

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