India, Oct. 7 -- U.S.-based scientists John Clarke, Michel Devoret and John Martinis have won the Nobel Prize in Physics for "the discovery of macroscopic quantum mechanical tunnelling and energy quantisation in an electric circuit", the award-giving body announced on Tuesday.

Quantum mechanics allows a particle to move straight through a barrier, using a process called tunnelling. As soon as large numbers of particles are involved, quantum mechanical effects usually become insignificant. The laureates' experiments demonstrated that quantum mechanical properties can be made concrete on a macroscopic scale.

In 1984 and 1985, John Clarke, Michel H. Devoret and John M. Martinis conducted a series of experiments with an electronic circuit b...