Wednesday
12
November 2025
4:00 - 5:30 PM IST
Location
Room 113, School of Arts and Sciences
Central Campus
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Arts and Sciences Lecture Series
Arts and Sciences Lecture Series
Pinaki Majumdar
Professor
School of Arts and Sciences
Ahmedabad University
Speaker
This year's Nobel Prize in Physics went to John Clarke, Michel Devoret and John Martinis for their 1985 work on "Macroscopic Quantum Mechanical Tunneling". In some way of counting this was the 17th Nobel Prize on foundational aspects of quantum mechanics, and the 7th related to superfluidity and superconductivity! So, an award long after the discovery, and one in a long line of "quantum" Nobels. Not surprisingly it did not create much flutter. However, the Clarke experiment is foundational in demonstrating quantum effects at a "macroscopic" scale—of about 1012 electrons—and in developing decoherence suppression methods that are at the heart of quantum bits (qubits) in today's quantum computers. We will try to draw this connection.
Speaker
Pinaki Majumdar
<p>Professor Pinaki Majumdar is an Indian condensed matter physicist and currently a Professor at Ahmedabad University. Prior to joining Ahmedabad University, he served as the Director of the Harish-Chandra Research Institute, Prayagraj. His research focuses on correlated quantum systems, and he is widely recognized for his contributions to this field. Professor Majumdar has received several prestigious honors, including the Global Indus Technovator Award from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology in 2007, one of India’s highest scientific awards, conferred by the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) for his contributions to the physical sciences.</p>
