Yale Physics Professor Devoret Receives Major European Award

The European Physical Society has awarded the 2004 Agilent Technologies Europhysics Prize to Michel Devoret, Yale Professor of Physics and Applied Physics, and to three other scientists for the "realization and demonstration of the quantum bit concept based on superconducting circuits."

The European Physical Society has awarded the 2004 Agilent Technologies Europhysics Prize to Michel Devoret, Yale Professor of Physics and Applied Physics, and to three other scientists for the “realization and demonstration of the quantum bit concept based on superconducting circuits.”

The superconducting electrical circuits that Devoret and his collaborators invented obey principles of quantum physics rather than classical Newtonian physics, the basis for electrical circuits in current computers.

Laws of quantum physics maintain that an object can be in two locations at the same time and that current can flow in opposite directions at the same time. Before Devoret’s findings, such startling behavior seemed impossible in a circuit connected to ordinary wires and voltage sources.

The main application of quantum computers will be to do in minutes calculations, that take current computers a thousands years to complete.

According to Devoret, the quantum computer is presently at a stage comparable to that of wireless communication of the early 1900s. While wireless was not widely available until the end of the century, hundreds of passengers were saved when the Titanic went down in 1912, because an SOS was sent by radio waves.

The Europhysics Prize, one of the most prestigious physics prizes presented in Europe, is given for internationally important areas of condensed matter physics.

Devoret is the recipient of many international awards and is hailed as one of the leading experimental condensed matter physicists of his generation. Before coming to Yale, Devoret was director of research of the Condensed Matter Physics Section of the French CEA (Atomic Energy Research Center) at Saclay, a government laboratory in a suburb of Paris. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Orsay in France in 1982 and did postdoctoral research at the University of California at Berkeley.

Other recipients of this year’s award are Daniel Esteve from France, Hans Mooij from the Netherlands, and Yasonobu Nakamura from Japan.

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Janet Rettig Emanuel: janet.emanuel@yale.edu, 203-432-2157