Overview
- The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded the prize for demonstrating quantum tunneling and quantized energy exchange in superconducting electrical circuits.
- Their hand‑held circuit behaved as a single quantum system that could tunnel between states and absorb or emit energy in discrete quanta.
- The work, carried out around 1984–1985 using Josephson junctions, showed that quantum laws can govern systems large enough to measure directly.
- The Nobel citation links these results to advances in quantum computers, quantum cryptography and quantum sensors, an impact emphasized by the Nobel committee.
- Each laureate receives a gold medal, a diploma and a share of 11 million Swedish kronor, with formal celebrations scheduled in Stockholm on December 10.