Overview
- The Royal Swedish Academy cited their discovery of macroscopic quantum tunneling and discrete energy levels in an electrical circuit.
- The experiments used a superconducting circuit separated by an ultra-thin insulator and operated at temperatures near absolute zero.
- Researchers observed the circuit’s charge carriers behaving as a single “giant particle” that tunneled through an energy barrier, with energy exchanged in quantized steps.
- The effects were demonstrated on a roughly centimeter-scale chip, extending quantum phenomena to a device large enough to handle.
- Commentaries link the work to advances in quantum computing, ultra-precise sensing and quantum cryptography, while noting the key experiments date back to the 1980s.