Alain Aspect

Facts

Alain Aspect

© Nobel Prize Outreach. Photo: Stefan Bladh

Alain Aspect
The Nobel Prize in Physics 2022

Born: 15 June 1947, Agen, France

Affiliation at the time of the award: Institut d’Optique Graduate School – Université Paris-Saclay, Paris, France; École Polytechnique, Palaiseau, France

Prize motivation: “for experiments with entangled photons, establishing the violation of Bell inequalities and pioneering quantum information science”

Prize share: 1/3

Work

One of the most remarkable traits of quantum mechanics is that it 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. In 1981–1982, Alain Aspect conducted groundbreaking experiments using entangled light particles, photons. These and other experiments confirm that quantum mechanics is correct and pave the way for quantum computers, quantum networks and quantum encrypted communication.

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MLA style: Alain Aspect – Facts – 2022. NobelPrize.org. Nobel Prize Outreach AB 2024. Wed. 8 May 2024. <https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/2022/aspect/facts/>

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