The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics to Alain Aspect, John F. Clauser and Anton Zeilinger, as per an official release issued on October 4.
Aspect, 75, is a French physicist, associated with Université Paris-Saclay. Clauser, born in 1942, is an American experimental physicist linked to the California-based J.F. Clauser & Associates; and the 77-year-old Zeilinger is an Austrian quantum physicist and a professor at the University of Vienna.
The award has been issued to them "for experiments with entangled photons, establishing the violation of Bell inequalities and pioneering quantum information science”, the release said.
By "Bell inequalities", a reference is made towards late Irish physicist John Stewart Bell, who had in 1960s developed the mathematical inequality that is named after him. According to Bell inequalities, if there are hidden variables, the correlation between the results of a large number of measurements will never exceed a certain value. However, quantum mechanics predicts that a certain type of experiment will violate Bell’s inequality, thus resulting in a stronger correlation than would otherwise be possible.
"Alain Aspect, John Clauser and Anton Zeilinger have each conducted groundbreaking experiments using entangled quantum states, where two particles behave like a single unit even when they are separated. Their results have cleared the way for new technology based upon quantum information," the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said.
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Clauser is credited with building an apparatus that emitted two entangled photons at a time, each towards a filter that tested their polarisation.
Some loopholes remained after Clauser’s experiment, the release said, adding that Aspect subsequently "developed the setup, using it in a way that closed an important loophole". He was able to switch the measurement settings after an entangled pair had left its source, so the setting that existed when they were emitted could not affect the result, it added.
Using refined tools and long series of experiments, Zeilinger started to use entangled quantum states. Among other things, his research group has demonstrated a phenomenon called quantum teleportation, which makes it possible to move a quantum state from one particle to one at a distance, the release further said.
“It has become increasingly clear that a new kind of quantum technology is emerging. We can see that the laureates’ work with entangled states is of great importance, even beyond the fundamental questions about the interpretation of quantum mechanics,” says Anders Irbäck, Chair of the Nobel Committee for Physics.
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