RIKEN researchers take home the Simon Prize

Two RIKEN researchers, Yasunobu Nakamura and Jaw-Shen Tsai, have jointly won the prestigious 2008 Simon Memorial Prize for their ground-breaking contributions to the development of low-temperature physics, in particular quantum computing.

Both scientists work at the RIKEN Advanced Science Institute in Wako and are currently key members of NEC’s Nano Electronics Research Laboratories.

The two scientists were rewarded for their work investigating the behaviour of superconducting electronic devices and applying their findings to creating quantum bits (qubits), the building blocks of quantum computers. With their massive processing power, quantum computers will be able to solve a variety of problems that conventional computers cannot.

One prize committee spokesman noted that Nakamura and Tsai “were the first to show that quantum coherence could be displayed in a superconducting device, opening the way to a completely new solid-state quantum-computer architecture and a new regime in which to test quantum mechanics.”

The prizes were awarded at the opening ceremonies of the 25th International Conference on Low Temperature Physics in Amsterdam in August.

The Simon Prize recognizes outstanding contributions to experimental or theoretical low-temperature physics. It is awarded by the Institute of Physics, based in London

Published: 17 Oct 2008

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http://www.rikenresearch.riken.jp/roundup/614/ Link to article on RIKEN Research