The 2012 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded jointly to Serge Haroche and David J. Wineland "for ground-breaking experimental methods that enable measuring and manipulation of individual quantum systems".
Particle control in a quantum world
Serge Haroche and David J. Wineland have
independently invented and developed methods for measuring and
manipulating individual particles while preserving their
quantum-mechanical nature, in ways that were previously thought
unattainable.
The Nobel Laureates have opened the door to a new era of
experimentation with quantum physics by demonstrating the direct
observation of individual quantum particles without destroying them. For
single particles of light or matter the laws of classical physics cease
to apply and quantum physics takes over. But single particles are not
easily isolated from their surrounding environment and they lose their
mysterious quantum properties as soon as they interact with the outside
world. Thus many seemingly bizarre phenomena predicted by quantum
physics could not be directly observed, and researchers could only carry
out thought experiments that might in principle manifest these bizarre
phenomena.
Through their ingenious laboratory methods Haroche and Wineland
together with their research groups have managed to measure and control
very fragile quantum states, which were previously thought inaccessible
for direct observation. The new methods allow them to examine, control
and count the particles.
Their methods have many things in common. David Wineland traps
electrically charged atoms, or ions, controlling and measuring them with
light, or photons.
Serge Haroche takes the opposite approach: he controls and measures
trapped photons, or particles of light, by sending atoms through a trap.
Both Laureates work in the field of quantum optics studying the
fundamental interaction between light and matter, a field which has seen
considerable progress since the mid-1980s. Their ground-breaking
methods have enabled this field of research to take the very first steps
towards building a new type of super fast computer based on quantum
physics. Perhaps the quantum computer will change our everyday lives in
this century in the same radical way as the classical computer did in
the last century. The research has also led to the construction of
extremely precise clocks that could become the future basis for a new
standard of time, with more than hundred-fold greater precision than
present-day caesium clocks.
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