It sits inside the Josephson junction, the tiny circuit element at the heart of superconducting quantum bits, or qubits.
For much of the history of superconducting quantum computing, researchers had other limitations to overcome, including electromagnetic noise, quasiparticle losses and losses associated with wiring.
Devoret shared the 2025 Nobel Prize in Physics with John Clarke and John Martinis,a UCSB professor of physics, for experiments demonstrating macroscopic quantum mechanical tunneling and energy quantization in an electrical circuit, foundational work for today's superconducting quantum technologies.
Disorder only atoms wide A conventional Josephson junction sandwiches an insulating layer of aluminum oxide between two superconducting aluminum electrodes.
Princeton's Nathalie de Leon, who directs the institute, has noted that superconducting quantum researchers have relied on essentially the same junction technology for roughly 25 years.