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Nirmalya Kajuri

@kajunut.bsky.social

1K followers 110 following 320 posts

Assistant Professor of Physics at IIT Mandi and Science Writer. String Theory.

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Nirmalya Kajuri @kajunut.bsky.social · Jul 6

📚 Book deal Alert 📚

I have signed with @harvardpress.bsky.social to write a deep dive on the the universe's greatest locked room mystery--the black hole information loss paradox.

🧪⚛️

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Nirmalya Kajuri @kajunut.bsky.social · 44m

"Black holes give off the impression of being dark and brooding, absorbing all the light around them. But they are secretly musical."

I wrote about the music of black holes in my latest post. 🧪⚛️

open.substack.com/pub/nirmalya...

Black Hole Beats

Ringing Black Holes can give Ringo Starr a run for his money

open.substack.com

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Nirmalya Kajuri @kajunut.bsky.social · 1d

Thank you Ironmoon :)

Nirmalya Kajuri @kajunut.bsky.social · 1d

As we look to enter the age of quantum technology, we recognize the pioneering importance of the work of Clarke, Devoret, and Martinis.

Congratulations to the winners!

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Nirmalya Kajuri @kajunut.bsky.social · 1d

These experiments are not only of fundamental interest.

They laid the foundations for superconducting qubits (used in many designs of quantum computers), quantum sensors, quantum electronic circuits.

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Nirmalya Kajuri @kajunut.bsky.social · 1d

A major challenge was protecting the effect from being would destroyed by decoherence, which they pulled off.

tl/dr: The Nobel laureates showed that a piece of metal wire with billions of electrons behaves like a single quantum particle showing quantized energy and tunneling behavior.

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Nirmalya Kajuri @kajunut.bsky.social · 1d

The trio observed this macroscopic quantum tunneling directly.

Further, they found that the energy of this macroscopic quantum state is "quantized". The circuit can only occupy discrete energy levels, just like electrons in atoms.

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Nirmalya Kajuri @kajunut.bsky.social · 1d

In classical (pre-quantum) physics, if a particle's energy is less than the potential barrier, it cannot pass.

Quantum mechanically however, particles can "tunnel" through potential barriers.

For Josephson junctions, the aforementioned phase plays the role of the particle and tunnels through.

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Nirmalya Kajuri @kajunut.bsky.social · 1d

This is the phase difference between the two superconductors.

The phase acts like a particle moving in a “washboard” potential.

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Nirmalya Kajuri @kajunut.bsky.social · 1d

Pairs of electrons (Cooper pairs) can tunnel through this barrier. In a superconductor, billions of Cooper pairs form a collective (aka condensate).

The collective tunneling of these billions of electrons can be described by a single macroscopic quantum variable.

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Nirmalya Kajuri @kajunut.bsky.social · 1d

They did this for superconducting circuits i.e electric circuits made from materials that carry current with zero resistance at very low temperatures.

Inside such circuits lies the Josephson junction, a thin barrier between superconductors.

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Nirmalya Kajuri @kajunut.bsky.social · 1d

Quantum mechanical phenomena is usually confined to the microscopic world of atoms, electrons, photons.

Macroscopic objects do not behave quantumly because a phenomena called decoherence kills quantum effects.

Clarke, Devoret and Martinis demonstrated quantum behavior in macroscopic objects

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Nirmalya Kajuri @kajunut.bsky.social · 1d

The 2025 Nobel Prize in Physics goes to John Clarke, Michel Devoret, and John Martinis —

“for the discovery of macroscopic quantum mechanical tunnelling and energy quantisation in an electric circuit.”

Here's what I understand of their work ⚛️🧪🧵

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Nirmalya Kajuri @kajunut.bsky.social · 2d

Team Bennett!

Also Michael Berry.

Nirmalya Kajuri @kajunut.bsky.social · 2d

Which books do you have in mind?

Nirmalya Kajuri @kajunut.bsky.social · 2d

Why are there so many books on pop science 🧪 but so few on pop (academic) philosophy ?

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Nirmalya Kajuri @kajunut.bsky.social · 3d

AI will never be as smart as humans I say while making yet another decision prompted by algorithms

Nirmalya Kajuri @kajunut.bsky.social · 3d

The long-standing problem with MWI of course is understanding where the probabilities come from. No satisfactory answers to the best of my knowledge.

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Nirmalya Kajuri @kajunut.bsky.social · 3d

Yeah, except for the collapse into a single possibility part (unless you subscribe to MWI)

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Nirmalya Kajuri @kajunut.bsky.social · 3d

How do you define transfer of information here?

Nirmalya Kajuri @kajunut.bsky.social · 4d

😂

Nirmalya Kajuri @kajunut.bsky.social · 4d

What counts as a quantum measurement? ⚛️

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Nirmalya Kajuri @kajunut.bsky.social · Sep 8

its a joke

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Nirmalya Kajuri @kajunut.bsky.social · Sep 8

The existence of Ringo Starr implies the existence of ringing black holes.
⚛️🧪

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Nirmalya Kajuri @kajunut.bsky.social · Sep 6

4459 Scientists from around the world have signed a statement on Gaza. The list includes 14 Nobel Prize winners, 5 Fields medalists, 21 Breakthrough Prize winners, and 34 Dirac Medalists.

t.co/bSC7HmJdso

https://sites.google.com/view/statement-by-scientists-gaza

t.co

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Reposted by Nirmalya Kajuri

Phil Plait @philplait.bsky.social · Aug 29

Hey, I'm not saying this is the single greatest astronomy book ever written. I'll let others come to realize that on their own.

Samara @samaraspeakers.bsky.social · Aug 29

Under Alien Skies by @philplait.bsky.social is a finalist for the One Book Sarasota program! www.sarasotacountylibraries.org/Home/Compone...

A book cover image of the book Under Alien Skies by Philip Plait, PhD, Author of bad Astronomy, text in white over an image of asteroids floating in space in front of an orange planet against a dark background.

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