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Michel Devoret

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Michel Devoret
Devoret in 2017
Born
Michel Henri Devoret

1953 (age 71–72)
Paris, France
EducationTélécom Paris (Dipl.Ing.)
University of Orsay (DEA, PhD)
Known forTransmon
Fluxonium
Quantum limited amplification
AwardsAmpère Prize (1991)
John Bell Prize (2013)
Fritz London Memorial Prize (2014)
Micius Quantum Prize (2021)
Comstock Prize in Physics (2024)
Nobel Prize in Physics (2025)
Scientific career
FieldsCondensed matter physics
Quantum information
Quantum measurements
InstitutionsCollège de France
Yale University
University of California, Santa Barbara
Thesis Mise en évidence d'un ordre orientationnel de type vitreux dans l'hydrogène et le deutérium solides[1]  (1982)
Doctoral advisorNeil S. Sullivan
Doctoral studentsVincent Bouchiat[2]

Michel Henri Devoret[3] (French pronunciation: [miʃɛl dəvɔʁɛ]; born 5 March 1953[4]) is a French-American physicist.[5][6] He is Professor of Physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara,[7][8] and Professor Emeritus of Applied Physics at Yale University.[9] He serves as the Chief Scientist for Quantum Hardware at Google Quantum AI.[10] He is known for the development of various superconducting quantum computing architectures, including the quantronium, the transmon, and the fluxonium.

He shared the 2025 Nobel Prize in Physics with John Clarke and John M. Martinis for their joint work on macroscopic quantum phenomena in superconducting circuits.[11]

Early life and education

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Devoret was born in Paris, France, in 1953.[12][13] He has stated that his parents were of Jewish background, even though they were not religious.[14]

Devoret graduated with an engineer's degree in telecommunications from École nationale supérieure des télécommunications (ENST, now known as Télécom Paris) in Paris in 1975.[15][12] He obtained a graduate diploma (DEA) in quantum optics from the University of Orsay (present-day Paris-Saclay University), followed by a doctorate in condensed matter physics in 1982.[12][15] He performed his doctoral research at CEA Saclay in the group of Anatole Abragam,[16][17] under the supervision of Neil S. Sullivan.[17]

Career

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Devoret worked as a postdoctoral researcher in John Clarke's group at the University of California, Berkeley, from 1982 to 1984.[12] Together, with John M. Martinis, a graduate student at the time, they demonstrated for the first time the quantized energy levels of a Josephson junction in 1985.[12][16]

Devoret then returned to France and founded the Quantronics group at the Orme des Merisiers laboratory of CEA Saclay together with Daniel Esteve [fr] and Cristian Urbina. The group measured the traversal time of tunnelling, invented an electron pump, observed the charge of Cooper pairs directly, and developed a type of qubit dubbed quantronium. They also observed the Ramsey fringes of quantronium.[12][18][19]

In 1996, Devoret spent a research stay in the laboratory of Hans Mooij at Delft University of Technology.[20]

Devoret became a professor at Yale University in 2002. At Yale University, Steven Girvin, Robert J. Schoelkopf, and Devoret devised a type of superconducting charge qubit called the transmon.[21][22] In 2009, Devoret also pioneered fluxonium,[23] which can be understood as a special type of flux qubit. In 2010, he also developed a microwave quantum limited amplifier for qubit readout and sensing.[24][25]

He also participated in 2018 in an experiment demonstrating the interruption and reversal of quantum jumps in a superconducting artificial atom, providing new insights into the dynamics of quantum measurement.[26]

From 2007 to 2012, Michel Devoret held the Chair of Mesoscopic Physics at the Collège de France where his inaugural lecture, "From the Atom to Quantum Machines," illustrated the connection between fundamental quantum phenomena and emerging quantum technologies.[27][28] He resigned in 2013.[12][18]

In 2023, he was named the Chief Scientist for Hardware at Google Quantum AI.[10] In 2024, he moved to the University of California, Santa Barbara to serve as Professor of Physics.[7]

Honors and awards

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In 1970, Michel Devoret received the Prix de la Couronne française, an award recognizing young French researchers.[29]

Devoret was elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2003,[3] of the French Academy of Sciences in 2007[30] and of the National Academy of Sciences in 2023.[5] In 2008, he was invested as a Knight of the Legion of Honour.[31]

Devoret and Esteve were awarded the Ampère Prize by the French Academy of Science in 1991.[32] In 1995, Devoret received the Descartes-Huygens Prize from the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Science.[33] Devoret, Esteve, Yasunobu Nakamura and Johan Mooj were awarded the Europhysics-Agilent Prize by the European Physical Society in 2004.[34] In 2013, Devoret and Schoelkopf were awarded with the John Stewart Bell Prize for "Fundamental and pioneering experimental advances in entangling superconducting qubits and microwave photons, and their application to quantum information processing."[35]

In 2014, Devoret shared the Fritz London Memorial Prize with Martinis and Schoelkopf.[36] The Micius Quantum Prize was jointly awarded in 2021 to Devoret, Clarke and Nakamura.[37] In 2016, Devoret was awarded the Olli V. Lounasmaa Memorial Prize.[15]

The 2024 Comstock Prize in Physics was awarded to Devoret and Schoelkopf.[38] In 2025 Devoret, Clarke and Martinis were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for their joint discovery of macroscopic quantum mechanical tunnelling and energy quantisation in an electric circuit.[11]

Distinctions

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References

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  1. ^ Abragam, Anatole (1982). "Magnétisme nucléaire renforcé" (PDF). Collège de France.
  2. ^ "Michel Devoret". theses.fr (in French). Retrieved 12 October 2025.
  3. ^ a b "Michel Henri Devoret". American Academy of Arts & Sciences. 6 December 2018. Retrieved 7 October 2025.
  4. ^ "PRIX NOBEL DE PHYSIQUE 2025 : Parcours des lauréats". Encyclopædia Universalis (in French). 21 October 2025. Retrieved 17 November 2025.
  5. ^ a b "Michel H. Devoret". National Academy of Sciences. Retrieved 10 October 2025.
  6. ^ "Membership Overview". National Academy of Sciences. National Academy of Sciences. Retrieved 17 October 2025.
  7. ^ a b "Michel Devoret | Department of Physics | UC Santa Barbara". www.physics.ucsb.edu. Archived from the original on 7 October 2025. Retrieved 7 October 2025.
  8. ^ "Michel Devoret – Andrew D. White Professors-at-Large Program". Archived from the original on 7 October 2025. Retrieved 7 October 2025.
  9. ^ "Michel Devoret". Yale Engineering. Archived from the original on 7 October 2025. Retrieved 7 October 2025.
  10. ^ a b "Googler Michel Devoret awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics". Inside Google. Archived from the original on 7 October 2025. Retrieved 7 October 2025.
  11. ^ a b Physics Nobel Prize (7 October 2025). Announcement of the 2025 Nobel Prize in Physics. Retrieved 7 October 2025 – via YouTube.
  12. ^ a b c d e f g "Michel Devoret". Collège de France.
  13. ^ "Nobel Prize in Physics 2025". NobelPrize.org. Retrieved 7 October 2025.
  14. ^ Zierler, David (7 April 2021). "Devoret, Michel on 2021 April 7". Niels Bohr Library & Archives.
  15. ^ a b c "Olli V. Lounasmaa Memorial Prize". Aalto University. Archived from the original on 23 January 2025. Retrieved 7 October 2025.
  16. ^ a b Hassinger, Sebastian (11 September 2024). The New Quantum Era. "O'Reilly Media, Inc.". ISBN 978-1-0981-4938-3.
  17. ^ a b Abragam, A. (2000). De la physique avant toute chose (in French). Odile Jacob. ISBN 978-2-7381-9064-2.
  18. ^ a b "2025 Nobel Prize Resources". AIP. Retrieved 8 October 2025.
  19. ^ Mooij, Hans (1 December 2004). "Superconducting quantum bits". Physics World. Retrieved 9 October 2025.
  20. ^ "The story of a research group at the origin of nan and quantum science in Delft. 1971-2013" (PDF). QuTech. 2022. Retrieved 17 November 2025.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  21. ^ "Yale's Michel H. Devoret wins 2025 Nobel Prize in Physics | Yale News". news.yale.edu. 7 October 2025. Retrieved 9 October 2025.
  22. ^ Elsayyid, Joseph (6 February 2025). "Yale Quantum Institute marks ten years". Yale Daily News. Retrieved 9 October 2025.
  23. ^ Manucharyan, Vladimir E.; Koch, Jens; Glazman, Leonid I.; Devoret, Michel H. (2 October 2009). "Fluxonium: single cooper-pair circuit free of charge offsets". Science. 326 (5949). American Association for the Advancement of Science: 113–116. arXiv:0906.0831. Bibcode:2009Sci...326..113M. doi:10.1126/science.1175552. PMID 19797655.
  24. ^ Roy, Ananda; Devoret, Michel (July 2018). "Quantum-limited parametric amplification with Josephson circuits in the regime of pump depletion". Phys. Rev. B. 98 (4) 045405. American Physical Society. arXiv:1801.10115. Bibcode:2018PhRvB..98d5405R. doi:10.1103/PhysRevB.98.045405.
  25. ^ "Yale-designed amplifier pushes the boundary of quantum physics". YaleNews. Yale University. 5 May 2010. Retrieved 10 October 2025.
  26. ^ Dumé, Isabelle (7 June 2019). "To catch a quantum jump". Physics World.
  27. ^ "From atoms to quantum machines". Collège de France. Retrieved 17 November 2025.
  28. ^ "Michel Devoret, De l'atome aux machines quantiques". La Lettre du Collège de France (24). December 2008 – via OpenEdition.org.
  29. ^ Regley, Martin (7 October 2025). "Nobel de physique : le Français Michel Devoret récompensé avec le Britannique John Clarke et l'Américain John Martinis". Paris Match. Retrieved 17 November 2025.{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  30. ^ "Michel Devoret". Académie des sciences (in French). 1 December 2007. Retrieved 7 October 2025.
  31. ^ "Décret du 11 juillet 2008 portant promotion et nomination".
  32. ^ "40 ans du Prix Ampère" (PDF). Académie de Sciences. 2016. Retrieved 7 October 2025.
  33. ^ "Prix Descartes-Huygens/Descartes-Huygensprijs Liste des lauréat(e)s" (PDF). Académie des sciences. Retrieved 7 October 2025.
  34. ^ "In Brief". Physics Today. 57 (7): 73–74. 1 July 2004. doi:10.1063/1.2408584. ISSN 0031-9228. Retrieved 7 October 2025.
  35. ^ "2013: Devoret and Schoelkopf". Archived from the original on 4 June 2014. Retrieved 7 August 2016.
  36. ^ "Fritz London Memorial Prize". phy.duke.edu. Retrieved 21 April 2020.
  37. ^ "John Clarke Is A Co-Recipient Of The Micius Quantum Prize | Physics". physics.berkeley.edu. Retrieved 7 October 2025.
  38. ^ "Noteworthy – Select Prizes and Awards to Members". American Academy of Arts & Sciences. 14 May 2024. Retrieved 7 October 2025.
  39. ^ "L'intégralité de la promotion du 14 juillet". Le Figaro. 14 July 2008. Retrieved 17 November 2025.{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
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