Nobel Prize in Physics 2022 shared by 3 scientists for work on quantum mechanics

The Nobel Prize 2022 for Physics has been awarded to three scientists - Alain Aspect, John F. Clauser and Anton Zeilinger at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm, Sweden, on October 4, "for experiments with entangled photons, establishing the violation of Bell inequalities and pioneering quantum information science".

The award will be handed out with a diploma, a gold medal and a cash prize of $9,00,000 on December 10, the day when Alfred Nobel, the creator of the awards died in 1896.

According to the Nobel Committee, the trio has demonstrated the potential to investigate and control particles that are in entangled states. Entanglement is defined as the state in which two particles exist in the same state irrespective of the distance between them. Scientists say that someone who measures the property of one particle can immediately determine the result of an equivalent measurement on the other particle when two particles are in entanglement. 

Entanglement is considered one of the most debated elements of quantum mechanics, and “this year’s laureates have explored these entangled quantum states, and their experiments laid the foundation of the revolution currently underway in quantum technology”, the Nobel Committee said. 

“The laureates’ development of experimental tools has laid the foundation for a new era of quantum technology”, it added. The work by this year’s laureates is considered ground-breaking because intense research is being conducted to construct quantum computers, improve measurements, build quantum networks and establish secure quantum encrypted communication by finding a way to utilise special properties of individual particle systems.

In 2021, the Nobel Prize for Physics was awarded to three scientists for their work that helped explain and predict complex forces of nature, thereby expanding our understanding of climate change. 

While Syukuro Manabe and Klaus Hasselmann shared one-half of the award “for the physical modelling of Earth’s climate, quantifying variability and reliably predicting global warming”, Georgio Parisi was accorded the other half “for the discovery of the interplay of disorder and fluctuations in physical systems from atomic to planetary scales.”

The first Nobel Prize of the year was awarded for Physiology or Medicine to Sweden’s Svante Paabo for unlocking secrets of Neanderthal DNA that provided key insights into our immune system and discovering the Denisova, another kind of extinct hominins.

About the 2022 Nobel Prize winners

Alain Aspect: Born in 1947 in Agen, France, Aspect is a PhD from Paris-Sud University, Orsay, France and a professor at Université Paris-Saclay and École Polytechnique.

John F Clauser: He was born 1942 in Pasadena, California and has a PhD from Columbia University in New York. He is also a research Physicist at J.F. Clauser & Associates.

Anton Zeilinger: Born 1945 in Austria’s Ried im Innkreis, Zeilinger is a PhD from University of Vienna, Austria and a professor at the same institution.