Nobel Prize in Physics to Franco-Austro-American trio, quantum pioneers

The Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded on October 4 to Frenchman Alain Aspect, American John Glaser and Austrian Anton Zeilinger, pioneers of the revolutionary methods of quantum physics.

Three septuagenarians are being rewarded for their discoveries of “quantum entanglement,” the mechanism by which two quantum particles perfectly entangle each other regardless of the distance separating them, the Nobel jury announced.

The demonstration of this astonishing property has paved the way for new technologies in quantum computing and ultra-secure communications, or ultra-sensitive quantum sensors that allow extremely precise measurements such as gravity in the atmosphere.

According to the Nobel jury, the trio is being rewarded for “establishing violations of entangled photons, Bell’s inequalities, and opening a pioneering path to quantum computing.”

“Alain Aspect, John Clauser, and Anton Zeilinger each conducted groundbreaking experiments using entangled quantum states, where two particles behave as a single unit even though they are separated,” he explains.

This chaotic dynamics is predicted by quantum theory. Yet even Albert Einstein didn’t believe it: two initially fused particles (like twins) can behave similarly at a distance, keeping the identity of their common past.

Affiliated with the French University of Paris-Saclay, Alain Aspect is 75, Jan Glaser is 79 and Anton Zeilinger of the University of Vienna is 77.

The prize is awarded in each category with 10 million Swedish crowns (approximately 920,000 euros), which can be shared in the event of co-winners.

Earlier in the day, the Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology was awarded to Swede Svante Pabo, father of Denisovan man, paleogenomics and discoverer of Neanderthal man DNA.

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