France, Oct. 7 -- FrenchmanMichel H Devoret as well as his longtime American collaborator John M Martinis and the Briton John Clarke were on Tuesday awarded the 2025 Nobel Prize in Physics for their work on quantum physics in action.

The trio, who all carry out their research at American universities, were honoured "for the discovery of macroscopic quantum mechanical tunnelling and energy quantisation in an electric circuit," the Nobel jury said.

Quantum mechanics describes how differently things work on incredibly small scales.

For example, when a normal ball hits a wall, it bounces back. But in the quantum world, a particle will pass straight through that same wall - a phenomenon called "tunnelling".

The 2025 prize was awarded for e...