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France-born Alain Aspect, American John Clauser and Austrian scientist Anton Zeilinger were on Tuesday awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics «for experiments with entangled photons, establishing the violation of John Stewart Bell inequalities and pioneering quantum information science».
They 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 ineffable effects of quantum mechanics are starting to find applications. There is now a large field of research that includes quantum computers, quantum networks, and secure quantum encrypted communication,» the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said in a statement.
One key factor in this development is how quantum mechanics allows two or more particles to exist in what is called an entangled state.
What happens to one of the particles in an entangled pair determines what happens to the other particle, even if they are far apart.
