Nobel Prize in Physics Winner: The Quantum Leap That Changed Everything - John Martinis

Welcome. Today uh I'm very excited for

this all-in interview with this week's

Nobel laureate, winner of the Nobel

Prize in physics in 2025, John Martinez.

John, welcome to the all-in interview.

>> Yeah, thanks for inviting me. Um I'm

quite excited about this uh this talk

and uh you know, love to explain to

people about you know, what this prize

is all about.

>> All right, besties. I think that was

another epic discussion. People love the

interviews. I could hear him talk for

hours. Absolutely. Oh, he crushed your

questions in a minute.

>> We are giving people ground truth data

to underwrite your own opinion. What did

you guys think? That was fun. That was

great.

[Music]

>> Well, the Nobel Prize is the most

prestigious honor and particularly in

physics that I think can be awarded.

You're in the record books. It's going

to be an incredible ceremony coming up

for you. Maybe we could go back to the

beginning in your history. I'd love to

hear a little bit about, you know, where

did you grow up and how did you get

started with your interest in physics?

>> Uh, well, so I uh I grew up in San

Pedro, California, and uh, you know,

grew up there my whole time. My my

father was a fireman and my mom stayed

at home, took care of us, and um, you

know, through the years I was always

interested in science, technology. I'm

going to say one of the things is, you

know, my my dad, you know, actually

didn't have a high school education, but

very smart person. He was always

building things in the garage, various

projects. So, I grew up kind of knowing

how to build things, which also kind of

tells you how things work, you know,

kind of empirical view, you know,

tactical view of how physics works. So

uh when I took physics in high school, I

actually loved it because there was

actually some math behind it and

concepts and you know really made sense

to me and uh you know I I just really

you know fell in love with the subject

and then went to UC Berkeley and and did

pretty well there and enjoyed it. Uh

enjoyed it a lot. And then in my senior

year at UC Berkeley I had a class from

John Clark who was my adviser and found

out what he was doing. and he was just

starting to look at these quantum

mechanics and electrical devices stuff

and it sounded really interesting for

me. I guess I have, you know, I guess I

could see maybe when something maybe

would would take off. So I started to to

uh to to do the graduate school work

with him.

>> You went to Berkeley for graduate

school.

>> I went to Gertie for graduate school,

which you're not supposed to do.

>> I was originally a physics and math

undergrad at Cal.

>> Okay. I changed my major later and

actually got my degree in astrophysics.

There was some upper division math class

that really turned me off to math as a

major. There was just so many proofs. It

drove me nuts.

>> Right. Right.

>> And then physics was always exciting,

but I liked uh working in the astro lab

and I worked actually at Lawrence

Berkeley Lab.

>> Oh, okay. Yeah.

>> But then you you stayed at Berkeley and

went to grad school, right?

>> Yeah, I stayed at Berkeley, went to grad

school. We started this project a couple

years into grad school. I forget exact

date. And what was interesting is this

was a question that was actually posed

by professor Anthony Leget who won the

Nobel Prize for you know helium 3 you

know physics uh in I think 20 2003

>> was that super fluid

>> super fluid helium 3. Yeah that's right.

>> So he showed like if you put helium 3

cold enough it kind of almost has this

new sort of characteristic with the

physics and how it moves and how it

works. Well, it has a this super fluid

behavior, but it has a very complicated

behavior because of the more complicated

nuclei of the helium 3. And

>> this had been discovered and people

worked for a while to figure that out.

And he, you know, helped develop the

theory for that. So, he was quite

wellknown, very, very smart person. And

although he won the Nobel Prize for

that, okay, there's not much helium 3

physics going on, but for the question

that led to our experiment, okay,

there's a huge field. And the question

was, do macroscopic

objects behave quantum mechanically?

Okay, and this is a macroscopic object

might be a small ball. In our case, it's

an electrical circuit with billions of

electrons in it, billions of atom and is

the collective motion of say the ball uh

quantum mechanical. Now, you know, if

you think about throwing throwing a ball

against the wall, it's going to bounce

off. But if you make the wall thin

enough and the ball light enough, it'll

then every once in a while tunnel

through because of the, you know, laws

of quantum mechanics. So, um

>> hold on, let's just pause on that for a

second. And I think that's really worth

spending a moment on.

>> Yeah. Great.

>> So when we talk about quantum mechanics,

when we talk about the relative position

or energy or movement of a particle at

the atomic scale as small as an atom or

smaller than an atom, we have to use

kind of probabilities to describe where

things are going to be. That was what

was really kind of the big understanding

of quantum mechanics in the early 20th

century, right? is that there's

>> the probability of things being where

they are and moving as they're moving

there. It's not like like deterministic

like we can see with the ball that we

throw around. When you get very very

small things get very fuzzy and it's

very hard.

>> So you hit upon upon the key idea here

maybe by accident but it's very

important. Quantum mechanics was

developed for the theory of small

things. You know, electrons, atoms, you

know, things things that are that are

the the fundamental constituents of it,

but very small. And um you know, if you

take an atom, it's made from electron

and a nucleus. You know, classically,

they attract each other and they would

just, you know, combine together and

then atoms basically would have no size.

Why do atoms have size? Okay, that you

know that that was one of the the

strange things and it's because this

atom is kind of not a a point particle.

I used to say to my kids that the

electrons were fuzzy. Okay. And and

quantum mechanically it has some wave

function and extended. You can think of

the electrons being all around the

nucleus at the same time. So um it it's

just a very strange behavior u but of

small things uh and of course very

important as how atoms work and how we

describe nature. So quantum mechanics

ultimately became a field that people

say is very non-intuitive in terms of

understanding where small small

particles are, the energy they have,

where they're moving to and and

basically we resolved to figuring out

that we had to use these functions. It's

not just a single point, but it's a

distribution. It's a whole bunch of

places and there's a probability of

where the atom could be or where the

electron could be. It's also a

probability of how fast it might be

moving. All of these things become

probability functions.

>> And you develop a mathematical theory

for doing this that you know takes you

until your third year in university to

really know enough math to understand

that. But basically that's right

>> these are forming waves waves of the

electron. So you have kind of a wave and

electron around the nucleus describing

what the uh the electrons are. And these

are kind of like standing waves, you

know, it's like hitting a string. Uh,

you know, if if different length

strings, different tension strings form

different notes, these vibrations of the

electrons around the atom can vibrate at

different frequencies.

>> So rather than think about an electron

moving around an atom in a predescribed

path and I can know where it is at any

point in time, the right way to think

about an electron around an atom is it's

in a wave. It's a and it's it's a long

there's a wave that describes kind of

where it is and it's doing

>> and you have the electron and you have

the proton

attracting it. So the whole wave theory

combines all those two and you know

gives you a description of how the the

atom works and quite accurate

description too. And so one of the other

kind of features that arises from the

fact that everything at a micro scale is

described by wave functions is that

there's a small probability of something

kind of extreme or extraordinary

happening. Like the one example is

Stephen Hawking figured out that you

could have a particle and antiparticle

come out of nowhere in the middle of

space and the antiarticle goes into the

black hole. The particle shoots off.

>> Yeah. And that the probability of that

happening is so low, but it happens

enough that the antiparticle actually

starts to delete part of a black hole.

And that's how black holes evaporate and

this

>> theory all these interesting things. But

can you tell us how what quantum

tunneling is? So this is another one of

these sort of features of quantum

mechanics that arises from the fact that

these things are kind of waves and

probability functions.

>> Yeah. So if if you have um if you have

an electron just traveling through space

hitting hitting a wall let's say there's

a little wave wave packet wave function

to it. So it's not a single particle. It

has some extent to it. And what happens

is that when that particle hits the

wall,

quantum mechanics say there is some

amount small amount of this wave

function or if you like the particle

going through the wall and then to the

other side.

>> Now most of the time it uh it bounces

off but every once in a while it goes

through. And you know this is seen in um

uh everyday devices. This is not and as

if you build very small um memory

circuit you have to worry about

electrons tunneling and charge leaking

off your capacitor. Uh they have

magnetic memories that depend on these

tunnel junctions. So this is a very

well-known phenomenon and if you make

the this barrier this insulator just you

know 10 20 atoms thick then that's thin

enough for it to go through

>> to go through. So this is what's so

interesting. Um you can actually predict

the number of electrons that might

tunnel through one of these barriers one

of these insulating barriers as they're

called over to the other side which

really is crazy to think about. It's

just like walking through walls, right?

I mean,

>> yeah, that's that's the idea.

>> Yeah. So, going back to the story you

were sharing, you're in grad school,

>> right?

>> And then Leot proposes this idea. Maybe

you can share a little bit more now that

we've got I think a bit of the basics on

what was discussed, which was

>> zooming out a bit like rather than just

think about all of this happening at a

microscopic scale, is it possible for it

to happen at a bigger scale?

>> Yeah. And again we've been talking about

quantum mechanics is the physics nature

at this microscopic atomic scale but the

question was if you made a macroscopic

object would it obey quantum mechanics

also okay and then you know that was the

basic question and it turns out that

there's a very natural system to look at

looking at an electrical system and look

seeing for quantum mechanics an

electrical system where the currents and

voltages of essentially electrical

oscillator does it behave like a

classical physics or does it behave with

this quantum mechanical nature to it?

And that was the question. Now it turns

out that when you think about quantum

mechanics and thinking about well

there's the quantum behavior but then at

some point you have to measure it which

then turns it into a probability.

There's something called the Schroinger

pat cat paradox where um in the paradox

you have your radioactive decay and then

you you you

let it happen for let's say half of the

radioactive decay time and then you say

and then the in you have a ready

detected decay a detector and then a

bottle of cyanide which will kill a cat

and then do you say you know after some

amount of time is the cat in the dead in

the live state. Okay. And you know,

physicists, you know, and this is this

good question. Einstein brought brought

it up or Shoner brought it up. A lot of

people uh discussed it. Uh but Alleged

pointed out that the reason this is a

paradox is you can believe that a

macroscopic object like a cat could be

in a quantum superposition state. And in

fact, there was no experime experimental

evidence that this could happen. And

that was his point. So um so he said

well you know people should be testing

this and let's see if it's true and uh

as a as a young graduate student who

just you know learned about quantum

mechanics and it's like oh that's a

really great great question that's

something that we should try to do and

we should try to do an experiment you

know on on the suggested system uh to

look for quantum mechanics. And the the

original proposal was looking for the

tunneling. Well, it turned out to be

more than that, but uh the it look for

tunneling.

>> Let me just kind of describe another way

is you know the macroscopic system could

be my entire body. Could I walk through

a wall?

>> That's right. And then the probability

of all of my atoms being in the perfect

moment, perfect position, you know, to

to be able to kind of cross through the

wall is so low, it would never happen in

this or many other universes of

>> and and that's the problem is that most

macroscopic objects when you try to

think about the quantum mechanics that

won't happen. Okay. So,

>> right. There's a small probability one

electron can cross over a barrier,

>> but the probability that many cross over

at once is lower and lower and lower and

that makes it very difficult to see at

scale. And what what happens is if you

look at an electrical circuit then the

parameters become favorable for seeing

this kind of macroscopic behavior. And

okay, it's hard to go into the the whole

physics of all that, but it's basically

because you can make a circuit that

operates at microwave frequencies. So

instead of you trying to go through the

wall once a second, it tries to go

through the wall five billion times a

second. Okay. So then it's it's a lot,

you know, more you know, you have more

chances to go through. And uh uh the

other thing is the just the various

parameters that involved in quantum

mechanics you know are favorable for

seeing this kind of phenomena. You have

to do the experiment right but uh it's

favorable for doing that.

>> So one of the parts of your experiment

you created what's called a Josephson

junction. Is that is that correct? So

this is two superconductors with a

barrier between them. Right. I got

really fascinated by superconductors

when I was maybe 12 years old. I I went

and bought a superc conducting disc etum

berium copper oxide. Yes, that's right.

>> From the back of Popular Science and

then I went to UCLA and I got a a jug of

liquid nitrogen

>> and then I floated a magnet above the

disc

>> because of the Meisner effect and I had

it at the science fair and I and I did

very well with the science fair that

year because I showed this really

>> What year was that? Was that when it was

discovered?

>> Must have been 919.

>> Okay. Yeah, that was close enough that

that was good. Yeah, the hard part is

getting the liquid nitrogen. But

>> yeah, and I had a friend whose dad was

like a doctor at UCLA or something like

that, so he was able to get the liquid

nitrogen for our demonstration.

>> Right. Yeah, that that was the hard

part. Okay.

>> I've always been fascinated by the

physics of superconductors and maybe you

can just explain one of these important

features of the of superconductors as it

relates to kind of resistance and

current flow and then we can talk about

your experiment.

So, so what happens is um when a a

material goes superconducting

all the electrons condense into one

state. Okay. Now to just to give you

analogy of how it's not perfect analogy

it's close analogy. If you have a normal

metal any metal we have at room

temperature it's like a gas of

electrons. It's like you know gas in the

air. And then when you get below the

superconducting temperature.

>> Sorry, I think we should just explain

that. So, so you have a metal all the

electrons are kind of moving around.

They're they're perturbed. They're all

different energies, different states.

That's right. Different energies,

different states. You know, there's some

firm statistics. Not go into that, but

it's more or less looks like a gas. You

think of a of a gas and then when you

cool it below you know a certain

temperature it then coaleses into let's

say a solid like like atoms will and the

electrons coales into the something

cooper cooper pair bcs condenset is the

name where all the electrons are kind of

locked together and doing the same

thing. Now the nice thing about that

it's not like they're frozen in place

but they have a free parameter that

allows them all the currents all the

electrons to flow in some direction

which is the supercurren

>> in a superconductor meaning a material

that's cool enough that it reaches its

superconducting critical temperature.

Right? So suddenly all the electrons can

still move. They can still create a

current but

>> but they're they're moving together like

they're in like in my analogy like

they're in a solid instead of the gas.

>> And because they're moving together,

>> okay, then then when you work through

all the physics, they are not um you

know, they aren't randomly scattering

off things. They're just moving

together. And then you get a supercurren

where for example if you made a ring a

superconductor superconductor that

current would basically flow for forever

around the ring. This is what you saw

with the floating magnet.

>> Right. That's so interesting. I've

always uh thought and there's obviously

been companies started around the idea

of creating an infinite battery where

you could store technically forever

electricity because the electrons are

just moving around. If it's

superconducting it can they can just

spin forever around that circuit. And

people actually do use big

superconducting magnets to store energy.

And when you get an MRI that you're in a

you're in a liquid helium machine with a

a superconducting magnet, they charge it

up and that magnetic field is basically

there forever. Uh you know, waiting for

people to to go inside it. It it's kind

of strange to be in you're inside this

super cold magnet there. But they've

designed it very well. Works well. So

this Josephson junction is two

superconductors. They're on either side

of a barrier that you create, an

insulating barrier. And then maybe just

explain the experiment and and what you

guys measured.

>> And this this was all while you were in

grad school, right?

>> Yeah. Yeah. And and uh and this is this

Jose junction because the Cooper pairs

have to tunnel through it, but they kind

of tunnel through it together without

any loss. This this actually forms

what's called an electrical inductor in

circuit in circuits. So an inductor is

normally a a coil of wire that stores

energy and its magnetic field. Here this

this just stores energy of the electrons

tunneling through here. And so it's a

it's something called we call a kinetic

inductance and it happens with this but

that forms a nonlinear inductance and

with a capacitor in the circuit that

forms an inductor capacitance resonance

circuit which is in your old which is

like in your radios you have filters of

LC resonance circuits to filter your

signal and do anything. So this is a

very common microwave and uh you know

radio frequency uh element that you use

all the time to make electrical

circuits.

>> So I just want to simplify that you have

these two superconductors split by this

barrier. There's some tunneling some of

these electrons are actually going

through the barrier to the other side

and then you can effectively measure all

of these different changes as you change

the temperature. You guys were putting

different voltage states into this

circuit that you built. And what you saw

and what you measured and what you

demonstrated was that there were these

very kind of discrete or specific

changes that happened that basically

demonstrated quantum mechanics at scale.

>> That's right. So, so this inductor

capacitor resonator which you just treat

as a you is a charge and a current going

through but because it's quantum

mechanics there's this wave function to

it. So there's some uncertainty in these

and then given just the way that the

simple electrical circuit works um uh

you can then demonstrate the quantum

mechanics one of the tunneling which is

a little bit hard to describe here but

you can see tunneling but I think the

little bit easier thing maybe easier is

to look at the energy levels of this and

let me kind of explain that when people

discovered you know atomic physics and

started doing any doing this they um

excited a gas of of you know some gas

and the light coming out of that gas

would be at certain colors of frequency.

So if you go outside and you have the

sodium lamps on, these are kind of the

yellow lamps, you have, you know, kind

of a single frequency coming out of that

lamp. Or nowadays you look at LEDs,

there are certain frequencies that come

out of that. And this is a quantum

mechanical effect that the how the

electrons travel around the atom.

There's only certain kind of frequencies

that they oscillate at. Now,

classically, you would expect there to

be all different frequencies that it

spirals around or spirals into the

nucleus. So, that's what you expect. But

we saw these discrete frequencies.

>> And so, by measuring those discrete

frequencies, you now had proof

>> that there was quantum mechanics

happening at a macro scale.

>> That That's right.

>> And you published this work. And was

there a lot of attention when you

published this work?

This was in 1985 86.

>> Yeah. 85 or I actually forget but 85 or

86.

>> And so was there much attention on this

work at the time? 8. Yeah. This was a

big question and people wanted to you

know understand that and you know we

published it in physical review letters

and it got a lot of attention and I

think we had a little article in

Scientific American that was very proud

of

>> that wrote about that and uh yeah it it

was you know it was kind of a kind of a

big deal.

>> What did you go on to do at that point?

Was it considered groundbreaking Nobel

Prize-winning work and what was the

story at that time when this came out?

>> Yeah. So, you know, it was an it was an

important piece of work and people

noticed it, but you know, it it you

know, we we showed that quantum

mechanics worked and quantum mechanics

worked on the macro scale, which was

nice, but one could still, you know,

argue, well, what is it good for? What

are you going to do? And the in fact the

secret of an important scientific

breakthrough

is does it lead to other experiments and

other papers and other inventions and

the like and uh that kind of took uh you

know many decades to happen because it

was so new and people had to do do that.

So I would say it was noteworthy at the

time but you know not necessarily you

know something for a Nobel Prize because

it was just kind of you know weird and

went off and you know what are you going

to do with it?

>> But what happened at the time was very

interesting and at the end of my thesis

time there was a conference in uh UC

Santa Barbara where I came here for the

first time.

>> Yeah. and uh they they were talking

about this experiment but the very last

day the last talk was by Richard Feman

very well-known physicist

>> of course the greatest yeah

>> the great yeah right you know I kind of

idolized him and and read his his his

books and whatever

>> and he was talking about using quantum

mechanics for computation which is

building a quantum computer

>> so he gave a talk that was, you know,

really kind of amazing. I'm going to be

honest as a student. I I didn't quite

catch everything and my Michelle dev my

dear friend said yeah maybe some of the

things wasn't quite figured out at the

time but afterwards he was absolutely

mobbed by people asking him questions

cuz it's so interesting to think about

taking this this you know basic law and

actually doing computation with it

>> right

>> and I was a graduate student so I was

kind of at the outside ring you know you

have the professor professors in close

and whatever and I was just a lowly

graduate student so I could hear a

little bit but what I what I learned

from this it was a great question and

and something that would be kind of

worth doing you know for your your life

pro your life work because it's so deep

and so interesting and maybe practical

and the like so that really motivated me

>> yeah so that big idea is to use quantum

mechanics and these properties of

quantum mechanics to do computing.

>> Yeah, that's right. And and I would say

uh uh soon after that other people in

the field got a little bit more specific

and showed how you would how you would

do it. And then it was in the early

1990s, maybe 5 years later, that Peter

Shaw came up with this factoring

algorithm to to solve a you know, a real

world problem with it.

>> Yeah. And it took a while to people

figure out. It was very abstract and you

know people quite weren't sure what to

do. But but like I said I could see that

in all the the crowd around Fineman

asking them questions that this was the

most you know most interesting

fundamental question you know how to

combine quantum mechanics with doing

computation. It's it's really amazing.

>> And so you started to do that with your

life's work pretty much. you go on to a

very good career.

>> Yeah. So my career path um was of course

quantum computing was getting developed

and and it took me a while to really get

go all in on it. Okay.

>> Yeah. So um what happened is Michelle

Devare was was from France from CA

France went to Berkeley went back I went

there as a posttock and worked with them

and they were young and unknown at the

time and people like well you're going

to go to Europe and you're not going to

get connected to US science but I knew

Michelle and Danielle Eststev and

Christian Abino the people I working

with were absolutely brilliant okay and

they've had a very illustrious a career.

So I went over there because I knew that

was great. And we continued to do

experiments on this.

>> Yeah.

>> And then after that I came back to the

US and I worked for the National

Institute of Standards and Technology.

And it turns out just down the hall from

Dave Wland and his group who went a

Nobel Prize for atomic physics for you

know doing quantum computation. And I

worked on some with doing experiments on

counting electrons and working for

metrology and then did other

experiments. And then in late uh the '9s

I I just again went all in on building a

quantum computer. There was funding

available at that time. It had

progressed enough theoretically that the

US government started you know funding

this to see if people can do it. And so

then couple years after 2014 I think you

ended up at at Google's quantum lab in

Santa Barbara. Is that right?

>> I was at UCSB for um 10 years or so

which was wonderful and built up the lab

to go from very basic things to building

a five and then 9 cubit quantum

computer. And then during that time,

Google got interested and I I kind of

decided that although academia was

great, it would be hard to get the team

together and keep them together for a

long time to build this complicated

machine and Google had the money. Okay.

>> Yeah. So, so we went there and we

started off fairly small uh mostly from

people coming from my UCSB group and

then in uh 2019

we published this quantum supremacy

experiment with 53 cubits where we made

a lot of cubits and we made them really

good and you know fast and whatever so

that we could run some algorithm a

mathematical algorithm that um what it

produced some output uh that was took

you know much much longer on a classical

computer to to emulate and do that. It

was not practical but it was a

demonstration of the power of a quantum

computer

>> that it worked. Well, just maybe give

your description of a cubit and maybe we

can relate, you know, how do we build

these quantum computers from cubits to

the Josephson junction and some of the

early work you had done that you ended

up winning the prize for.

>> So very simply, we have a metal wire and

a metal wire that gets put together on

this Joseen junction which represents a

a an inductor flowing through here. And

then from this wire to this wire, we

have a capacitor.

And then we set that up to oscillate at

about 5 GHz cell phone frequencies.

Uh uh you know to to form the cubit.

Okay, this oscillating thing. And then

there's at low temperatures

superconductors you know all this magic

we can we can get quantum mechanical

behavior out of that

>> and then you can measure that quantum

mechanical behavior create a

representation and use that to run your

computing.

>> That's right. What you can do is you put

on microwave pulses to change the state

of the quantum computer, change the way

it oscillates and then we connect it to

um it's a complicated readout circuitry

uh to you know in the end figure out

what state it's in.

>> Okay. And then and then you you connect

just an array of these and you just use

capacitive coupling from you know one

one wire to the to the next one to to

couple them together and it's more

complicated than that but that gives you

a good idea

>> and then just to understand

your work that you won this Nobel Prize

for that demonstrated this quantum

mechanical phenomena at scale. Is that

part of the design of a cubit and the

circuitry? Did that inform that design

work or explain it rather? Yeah.

>> Yeah. It was the very basic simplest

circuit. uh you know we were using

analog simulators at the time not even

the I took data with a computer but this

is this is far back enough that you know

it was very rudimentary

>> and then over the years we just got more

sophisticated design by the whole field

you know many many people

>> and uh and we were able to put things

together in a way to actually build a

computer now

>> right

>> the the I would say the reason why It's

interesting from the Nobel Prize thing

is what it led to and what it led to

right now is a thousand maybe several

thousand people around the world doing

research to build this superconducting

quantum computer and and it's just

turned into enormous field large number

of papers large number of people people

selling quantum computers IBM is selling

quantum computers people are selling

time in the quantum computers and the

fact that it was a it was a useful idea

okay that led and and and brought into

form uh uh all all these different

experiments ideas and many many people

contributed this

>> I mean it's very interesting and I think

just this broad question or observation

that sometimes

inquisitive minds

leads to research that leads to some set

of discovery that are completely not

apparent until 40 years later. the

effect or the impact it may have had

>> on building an industrial field like

there's now quantum computing everyone

feels is on the brink

>> of actually achieving what people have

talked about in theory for decades but

seems to be getting very close to doing

it and

>> yeah I I can talk on that but I would

say um you know this field many other

ideas on how to build a quantum computer

has been generated and uh it is very

exciting field quite large field and I

would say that the science was very very

deep too. To get these things to work

you have to invent lots of different

devices. You have to think about

materials. You have to fabricate it,

build complex control systems.

Engineering and physics is is to me

quite beautiful. And and just to tell

you a little bit about me, um you know,

I grew up building things and as an

experimentalist,

you know, I like to to build

instruments, you know, build experiments

to show this. And this was kind of the

ideal project for me because, you know,

from very early on it was like, well,

let's, you know, do this great physics,

but let's also build something. And by

saying, well, what do we have to do to

build a quantum computer? that kind of

led me to know what physics we have to

test and what are the kinds of things we

have to build and that's just the way my

mind works. I'm I'm much more

practically oriented. So it was a

perfect field for me to get in and

that's kind of what you know intuitively

led me to you know want to do this in

graduate school. And I think it's just

so fascinating the amount of engineering

and technology you have to do to make

this work.

>> Where are we in quantum computing

evolution today? So what's the state? At

what point will we have call it

generally accessible and generally

useful quantum computers that can do all

of the amazing things everyone's kind of

talked about for decades that one would

be able to do quantum computers.

>> That's right. So um right now we're

we're about 50 or 100 cubits for the

superconducting case but they they can

be fully controlled and run real

algorithms and do very complicated

things. They have a lot of other systems

that can do that. I think the the

newcomer on the block which looks good

is neutral atoms where they've made big

neutral atom systems but they they're

still working to get the gates

controlled really well and the like. But

what's happened right now is we can run

genuine algorithms on that and people

have uh h you know have ideas they want

to run but because these cubits are not

perfect okay you it's an analog control

system and fundamentally these quantum

bits have a little bit of error to it

little bit of noise to it you can only

run so complicated of a project and it's

good enough to write scientific papers

and try things out. Uh, every once in a

while people say they've done something

uh, you know, that's hard to compute and

well that's fine, but they aren't really

big enough to be useful yet. They have

to get bigger and they have to get

better, less noise.

>> Do you have a point of view on the

timelines? This is everyone's

speculation and there's been more hype

than reality.

>> Yeah, there's more hype than reality and

and uh, and it's hard. I used to not

want to speculate that but since I

started a company then I can do that and

what we want to do and it's a timeline

of many other groups is to do something

in let's say in the next 8 10 years

something like that but the problem is

you know people are predicting 10 years

you know for a while now so okay we we

have to do that but um I can tell you

for what we're doing is that we've

identified by what are kind of the

technology bottlenecks of the current

fabric turn ways to make a a quantum

computer. We've written some papers on

it and you know we're working with

people in the semiconductor industry to

manufacture this in a much more coste

effective quality way you know the way

you make these GPUs or something and we

think uh you know when we get that to

work we can scale up very rapidly so in

in a let's say 10year time scale

something like that

>> in a lot of technically difficult fields

like fusion energy perhaps even quantum

computing. They are seeing profound

acceleration

in getting to their crazy big goals on

these very big technical projects

because of AI. Is AI starting to play a

role in solving some of the engineering,

material science, scaling, noise issues

that we've seen historically in quantum

computing? And do you think that there's

an acceleration underway in performance

improvements because of AI? there there

may be um my partic and and and there's

things we can maybe do modeling and the

like. We also think what we can do is

use the quantum computer and AI together

to solve the problems better. So that

that that's what our theory team is

proposing. I used to work with Google

quantum AI. That's what they're

proposing. So there's a general feeling

of that. My particular view though is

that in terms of this control, if you

don't build your system cleanly enough

and you know that the control is clear

enough, uh you're you're not going to

get the the great performance out of it.

So I'm a little bit old school here and

and working on you know building it that

way. There's certainly some elements

where you can use AI,

you know, in the decoding circuit for

the the error correction and the like.

But the one thing to mention to you is

that, you know, these cubits are are

naturally very noisy and you can maybe

do sometimes 100 for bad cubits and

maybe a thousand maybe few thousand

operations before they kind of lose

their memory. You know, you can think of

it as like dynamic RAM where you have to

refresh it. Well, you have to refresh it

with error correction. And because of

that, you're talking about a million

cubit quantum computers to be general

purpose and solve really hard problems.

There might be some

>> a million something. A million is a good

round number for it. Maybe a little bit

more. And right now we're at you know a

hundred or you know a little bit more

than that. So we have a ways to go.

What is your view on China and the

progress that they're making in this

technology versus the US? This is the

topic dour in every field, industrial

field, computing, science is where's

China at compared to the US, the

comparisons and everyone's worried about

the progress in China versus the US and

what that means. So I can talk about my

own field but when I have read the

papers that um duplicated what we did at

at Google on the quantum supremacy

experiment you know they know what

they're doing. I mean they they go

through the theory they talk about a lot

of it is very similar to what we're

doing but they know what they're doing

and they're getting great results. And

the thing that scares me a little bit

is, you know, last December the Google

group published the latest results,

which is really much nicer. They made

some real improvement, but then China

soon afterward published something kind

of indicating they were, you know, on

par or near par or something to it. And,

you know, I'm worried that the the

Chinese government is saying, well, you

can't publish anything until it's in the

Western press. and then you can, you

know, then it's open and you can talk

about it.

>> That's precisely what I've heard. And

so,

>> yeah. So, so uh, you know, I I'm I'm a

I'm a little bit uh concerned about

that. Now, what we're doing with our our

company is we're doing a new generation

of fabrication of the devices. And I

would cons consider in my my my research

we had the simple fabrication with the

original papers in 85 and then around

2000 we had more sophisticated

fabrication and then for the quantum

supremacy experiment we did something

even more complicated other groups too

but we want to do a similar jump in the

fabrication and what's interesting about

this is we're going to be using applied

materials and the modern fabrication

processes that they have which on 300 mm

tools you know you can't get in China

for example

>> you can get it for camos and then

they're developing we're developing

standard processes but you know new

recipes and new ways to put it together

>> and we think by doing that we can do a

huge leaprog and then get there faster

and get there in a way that you know

will protect our lead. There's other

things we're doing too. Uh and you know

that that's a small part of it, but uh

you know we think there's a way to um

you know really lead the field and uh

and we're happy we have good industrial

partners of uh applied materials

synopsis design tools Hula Packard

Enterprise some startups who do the

theory work. Uh so you know we have a

good consortium and we want to use all

that knowledge and expertise of

engineering to make this happen.

>> Where were you when you got the news

this week that you won the Nobel Prize

and how surprised were you because this

is a 40year-old

research effort. Had anyone giving you a

call rumor gossip mill saying, "Hey,

you're on the list this year potentially

being considered."

>> So let me uh give you a little bit of

the inside story. Um you know if you we

we've known that this was a important

experiment from the beginning. we've

obtained some other prizes that are you

know much less wellknown and really

appreciative of all that and you you

what happens is the Nobel um um system

uh put together Nobel symposiums where

they get together physicists in a

certain field which is quantum

information and this kind of thing and

they they give uh have all the

scientists give talks and and they want

to kind of check on the vi vitality of

the you know of the field, how big is

it? And then you know also maybe some of

the the leaders that maybe think about

it, you know, can they give a good talk?

Would they good be a good

representative?

So um Michelle and John and I have been

to these uh symposiums before and we

kind of knew, you know, what was going

on, you know, that at least we were

considered. And but I I'll just tell you

as a scientist just to be invited to

these and be considered is a is a

fantastic honor, you know, and and

having getting the prize is just so kind

of unbelievable that you shouldn't think

that way. So, you know, I've known about

it for a few years. And in fact, to be

very honest, in the past when the dates

have come around, it's like, oh, is this

going to happen? And then you wake up in

the morning and it's like, "Oh, it

didn't happen." And you're kind of down

for a day. You know, it didn't happen

this year. And that's a very bad

attitude. I I don't like that at all.

And, you know, you you should not covet

some, you know, insanely difficult uh

prize that, you know, only only goes to

a few people. So, what happened this

year is I kind of worked through this

over several years and this year I just

kind of forgot about it. Okay. So, I

went to bed and then uh and then uh we

got the call at 3:00 and my wife

answered the phone and found out what

happened. But um she didn't wake me up

right away because she knew if the day

was going to be hectic and I needed my

sleep to not be grumpy. That

>> was nice of her.

>> Don't want to be grumpy talking it. So,

she woke me up at 5:30 and

>> you know, as I looked at the computer,

oh my god. you know, and then we had

some reporters coming over at 6

>> which, you know, interviewed me, you

know, right when I had found out, half

hour after I'd found out.

>> And it's it's a it's it's great. It's

it's a great honor and uh it's just been

really fun. And then, you know, I've

been getting a lot of emails from people

I've worked with or students I've had in

the past congratulating me and you

exchange little stories and the like.

and it's it's it's kind of a very

special time.

>> That's great. Any um science or

technology fields that you've been

following outside of your core

discipline that you think are really

exciting. I always like to hear what

major kind of thinkers

>> to be honest. I'm just so focused on

doing this and especially when you start

a company, you better be focused, right?

So, I'm doing that. But one of the

fields that I find, this is someone Ben

Mazen at UC Santa Barbara is looking for

exoplanets

and they're using superconducting

detectors that are somewhat similar to

what we're doing. In fact, in the 1990s

or so, I helped, you know, helped

establish that field with other people

and did that for five, six, seven years

uh to do that. but he's doing it in a

different way. And I really like how,

you know, this instrumentation, you

know, that we've been working on is

their quantum devices are are now able

to um uh do these astronomy

uh detectors and and look for look for

these. And of course, there's so much

going on in astronomy these way days

with gravitational detectors and

exoplanet searches and it it it's just

really fascinating to me. And again it's

very much technologyoriented where

people are building good detectors. This

is what I like. Okay. I like building

building instruments. So that that's

particularly interest.

>> Yeah, that's great. I mean very exciting

field and hopefully will develop quantum

computers that will help us build

materials and technology to help us get

there one day.

>> So that's right.

>> Many rungs on the ladder of human

progress. Well, congratulations again on

winning the Nobel Prize in physics this

year. Very welld deserved. It's a

fantastic moment. Enjoy it. Enjoy the

ceremony and we're excited for your

continued work in the field of material

quantum computing. And thank you.

>> Yeah. And thank you. I really enjoyed

the questions and the flow where you

were asking questions to explain it at

the right level for people. And uh I I I

really appreciate that. This is a great

great podcast.

>> Great. Thank you.

[Music]

>> I'm going all in.