{"id":5040,"date":"2026-05-13T15:09:42","date_gmt":"2026-05-13T19:09:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/oge.mit.edu\/msrp\/?post_type=profiles&#038;p=5040"},"modified":"2026-08-10T11:45:02","modified_gmt":"2026-08-10T15:45:02","slug":"tobias-classen","status":"publish","type":"profiles","link":"https:\/\/oge.mit.edu\/msrp\/profiles\/tobias-classen\/","title":{"rendered":"Tobias Classen"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"alignleft size-full is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"400\" height=\"599\" src=\"https:\/\/oge.mit.edu\/msrp\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/05\/Classen-Tobias.jpg\" alt=\"by Corban Swain\" class=\"wp-image-5583\" style=\"aspect-ratio:1;object-fit:cover;width:200px;height:auto\" srcset=\"https:\/\/oge.mit.edu\/msrp\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/05\/Classen-Tobias.jpg 400w, https:\/\/oge.mit.edu\/msrp\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/05\/Classen-Tobias-200x300.jpg 200w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" \/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-group\"><div class=\"wp-block-group__inner-container is-layout-constrained wp-block-group-is-layout-constrained\">\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Wesleyan University<\/strong><br>Faculty Advisor: Prof. Joseph Formaggio<br>Research Supervisors: Douglas Pinckney, Mingyu (Charles) Li<br>Department: Physics<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:0px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Biography<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Tobias Classen is a fourth-year Physics major at Wesleyan University. His interest in<br>the intersection of math and material science was sparked during his time as a TIG welding<br>instructor, and his passion for teaching has remained constant. At Wesleyan, he serves as a<br>teaching assistant for quantum mechanics and hopes to one day teach as a professor. He is<br>also committed to ensuring that his research benefits society, not war. At his home institution,<br>Tobias researches halide segregation in perovskite solar cells, exploring polaron models to<br>explain local inhomogeneities. During his REU at UPenn, he investigated preliminary steps<br>for biodegradable supercapacitors for sensors used to combat agricultural overwatering. Now,<br>at MIT, he simulates cosmic neutron radiation on superconducting quantum devices to combat<br>correlated error. He plans to continue this journey through a PhD in condensed matter physics.<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Bogoliubov Quasiparticle Distribution in Superconducting Circuits from<br>Neutron Impacts<\/strong><br>Tobias Classen1, Mingyu Li2, Doug Pinckney2, Joseph Formaggio2<br>1Department of Physics, Wesleyan University<br>2Department of Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center wp-block-paragraph\"><br>Quantum devices are limited in their applicability due to radiation-induced correlated errors.<br>These errors arise from quasiparticles (QPs) forcing qubit relaxation. QPs are born when<br>Cooper pairs, made from electron-phonon attraction, split during radiation impacts. Current<br>techniques such as gap engineering, the tuning of the difference in superconducting gap<br>across the device, present a partial solution. Gap-engineered quantum circuits successfully<br>prevent errors from QPs from radiation depositing &lt; 1 MeV, but errors from &gt; 1 MeV remain.<br>Additionally, prior work has ignored QP diffusion within the devices. Our models aim to<br>provide a more rigorous exploration of how these QPs move and change energies. We aim<br>to determine the QPs&#8217; distribution by simulating a 241-AmBe neutron source\u2019s effect on<br>our superconducting circuit. Using Geant4, a Monte Carlo particle simulator developed at<br>CERN, along with G4CMP, a condensed matter physics library for Geant4, we simulated<br>the QPs formed from neutron impacts and compared them to experimental results. Our<br>research simulated QP diffusion to better understand density as a function of time, along with<br>energy distribution from radiation impacts. Understanding the distribution opens avenues<br>for engineering the superconducting circuits to mitigate this source of error, aiding quantum<br>devices&#8217; reliability.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":5395,"template":"","profile_category":[25],"class_list":["post-5040","profiles","type-profiles","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","profile_category-2026-interns"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/oge.mit.edu\/msrp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/profiles\/5040","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/oge.mit.edu\/msrp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/profiles"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/oge.mit.edu\/msrp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/profiles"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/oge.mit.edu\/msrp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/profiles\/5040\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5688,"href":"https:\/\/oge.mit.edu\/msrp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/profiles\/5040\/revisions\/5688"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oge.mit.edu\/msrp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5395"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/oge.mit.edu\/msrp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5040"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"profile_category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oge.mit.edu\/msrp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/profile_category?post=5040"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}