Stockholm. The Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded yesterday to the Frenchman Alain Aspect, the American John Clauser and the Austrian Anton Zeilinger, three pioneers of the revolutionary mechanisms of quantum physics.
The trio of septuagenarians was honored for their discoveries of “quantum entanglement,” a mechanism in which two quantum particles are perfectly correlated, regardless of the distance between them, the jury said in a statement.
The discovery of this amazing property paved the way for new ultra-secure quantum computing and communication technologies, as well as ultra-sensitive quantum sensors that would enable extremely precise measurements, such as gravity in space.
This puzzling mechanics was predicted by quantum theory. However, not even Albert Einstein believed it: two particles united from the beginning – as twins would be – can retain the mark of their common past and behave in a coordinated way at a distance.
Each of the laureates “performed innovative experiments using entangled quantum states, in which two particles behave as a unit, even apart,” the jury noted.
“It is becoming increasingly clear that a new quantum technology is emerging,” said Anders Irback, chairman of the Nobel Committee for Physics, in a statement.
Aspect, Clauser and Zeilinger, who together won the prestigious Wolf Prize in 2010, were recognized for their advances on the work of John Stewart Bell, who in the 1960s “developed the mathematical inequality known by his name.”
Zeilinger, a 77-year-old professor of physics at the University of Vienna, said he did not expect to be awarded. “I was very surprised to get the call,” he said by phone at a news conference in Stockholm.
The Austrian scientist was recognized for his work with “quantum teleportation, which makes it possible to move a quantum state from one particle to another over a distance,” the jury added.
“It’s not like in the movies. star travel or so,” Zeilinger clarified. “The point is, using entanglement you can transfer all the information carried by an object to another site where the object is reconstituted.”
Aspect, a 75-year-old associate professor at Paris-Saclay University, said he was proud to join great names in physics such as Einstein, to whom he attributed “part of the credit” for the discovery of entanglement.
Quantum mechanics is a counterintuitive science that describes the world on an extremely small scale, where things can simultaneously be real, not exist, and somewhere in between.
Tech giants like Google are mobilizing a large number of researchers to shape the next generation of so-called “quantum computers”, whose computing power should allow them to solve problems that would otherwise be impossible.
“The first quantum revolution gave us transistors, semiconductors, computers and lasers,” Mohamed Bourennane, professor of quantum computing at Stockholm University, told AFP.
“But the second, based on superposition and entanglement, will allow us in the future to have quantum computers, or quantum inscriptions useful for obtaining images or sensors,” he added.
The winners will receive the award on December 10.
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