Alain Jean Aspect (French: [aspɛ] ⓘ; born 15 June 1947)[3] is a French physicist noted for his experimental work on quantum entanglement.[4][5][6][7] Aspect's experiment (1980–1982) bears his name.

Aspect was awarded the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics, jointly with John Clauser and Anton Zeilinger, "for experiments with entangled photons, establishing the violation of Bell inequalities and pioneering quantum information science".[8]

In 2025 he was elected to the Académie Française.

Education

Aspect is a graduate of the École Normale Supérieure de Cachan (ENS Cachan, today part of Paris-Saclay University).[2] He passed the agrégation in physics in 1969 and received his PhD degree in 1971 from the École supérieure d'optique (later known as Institut d'Optique Graduate School) of Université d'Orsay (later known as Université Paris-Sud). He then taught for three years in Cameroon as a replacement for then compulsory military service.[9]

In the early 1980s, while working on his doctorat d'État (habilitation thesis),[10] he performed the Bell test experiments that showed that Albert Einstein, Boris Podolsky and Nathan Rosen's putative reductio ad absurdum of quantum mechanics, namely that it implied 'ghostly action at a distance', did in fact appear to be realized when two particles were separated by an arbitrarily large distance (see EPR paradox and Aspect's experiment). A correlation between the particles' wave functions remains, as long as they were once part of the same undisturbed wave function before one of the child particles was measured. He defended his doctorat d'État in 1983 at Université Paris-Sud (today part of Paris-Saclay University).[11]

Aspect received an honorary doctorate from Heriot-Watt University in 2008.[12]

Research

Aspect's experiments, following the first experiment of Stuart Freedman and John Clauser in 1972, were considered to provide further support to the thesis that Bell's inequalities are violated in its CHSH version, in particular by closing a form of the locality loophole. However, his results were not completely conclusive since there were loopholes that allowed for alternative explanations that comply with local realism.[13]

After his work on Bell's inequalities, Aspect turned toward studies of laser cooling of neutral atoms, and Bose–Einstein condensates at the Kastler-Brossel Laboratory.[14]

Picture of Alain Aspect
Aspect at the École polytechnique (Polytechnic Institute of Paris) in 2013

Aspect was deputy director of the French "grande école" École supérieure d'optique until 1994. He is a member of the French Academy of Sciences and French Academy of Technologies, and a professor at the École polytechnique.[2]

Aspect at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics, 2013
Aspect at the Institut d'optique, 4 October 2022

Distinctions

Aspect was elected a Foreign Member of the Royal Society (ForMemRS) in 2015.[15] His certificate of election reads:

Honours and awards

Accolades received by Aspect include the following:[19][20]

Honours

Awards

Alain Aspect at the Balzan Prize ceremony (Bern, 15 November 2013)

Acknowledgement

Honorary degrees

Publications

Alain Aspect signing one of his publications in Lyon
  • Introduction aux lasers et à l'optique quantique (with G. Grynberg & C. Fabre), Paris, ed. Ellipses, 1997
  • Bose-Einstein Condensates and Atom Lasers (collectif book), London, ed. Plenum, 2000
  • Lévy Statistics and Laser Cooling: How Rare Events Bring Atoms to Rest (with F. Bardou, J.-Ph. Bouchaud & C. Cohen-Tannoudji), Cambridge, ed. Cambridge University Press, 2002
  • Einstein aujourd'hui (with M. Le Bellac, M. Leduc, F. Bouchet & É. Brunet), Paris, ed. CNRS, 2005
  • Introduction to Quantum Optics: From the Semi-classical Approach to Quantized Light (with G. Grynberg & C. Fabre), Cambridge, ed. Cambridge University Press, 2010
  • Single-Photon Generation and Detection: Physics and Application (collectif book), London, ed. Academic Press, 2013
  • Einstein et les révolutions quantiques, Paris, ed. CNRS, 2019
  • Einstein and the Quantum Revolutions, University of Chicago Press, 2024. ISBN 9780226832012
  • Si Einstein avait su, Paris, ed. Odile Jacob, 2025

References

  1. 1 2 "Certificate of Election: EC/2015/48: Aspect, Alain". London: The Royal Society. Archived from the original on 8 July 2019.
  2. 1 2 3 4 "Alain Aspect". Université Paris-Saclay. 17 February 2020. Retrieved 4 October 2022.
  3. ↑ "The Nobel Prize in Physics 2022". NobelPrize.org. Retrieved 4 October 2022.
  4. ↑ Aspect, Alain; Grangier, Philippe; Roger, Gérard (12 July 1982). "Experimental Realization of Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen-BohmGedankenexperiment: A New Violation of Bell's Inequalities". Physical Review Letters. 49 (2). American Physical Society (APS): 91–94. Bibcode:1982PhRvL..49...91A. doi:10.1103/physrevlett.49.91. ISSN 0031-9007.
  5. ↑ Aspect, Alain; Dalibard, Jean; Roger, Gérard (20 December 1982). "Experimental Test of Bell's Inequalities Using Time- Varying Analyzers". Physical Review Letters. 49 (25). American Physical Society (APS): 1804–1807. Bibcode:1982PhRvL..49.1804A. doi:10.1103/physrevlett.49.1804. ISSN 0031-9007.
  6. ↑ Aspect, Alain (2007). "Quantum mechanics: To be or not to be local". Nature. 446 (7138): 866–867. Bibcode:2007Natur.446..866A. doi:10.1038/446866a. ISSN 0028-0836. PMID 17443174. S2CID 4397846.
  7. ↑ "Alain Aspect's Curriculum Vitae, Updated March 2012" (PDF). Academia Europaea. 17 March 2012. Retrieved 4 October 2022.
  8. 1 2 "The Nobel Prize in Physics 2022". Nobel Prize (Press release). The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences . 4 October 2022. Retrieved 6 October 2022.
  9. ↑ "Alain Aspect, prix Nobel de physique 2022". cnrs.fr.
  10. ↑ "CV". Archived from the original on 20 March 2012. Retrieved 5 March 2011.
  11. ↑ "Qui est Alain Aspect, ce chercheur français co-lauréat du prix Nobel de physique ?". radiofrance.fr. 4 October 2022.
  12. ↑ "Annual Review 2008: Principal's Review". www1.hw.ac.uk. Archived from the original on 12 April 2016. Retrieved 29 March 2016.
  13. ↑ J.-Å. Larsson (2014). "Loopholes in Bell inequality tests of local realism". J. Phys. A. 47 (42) 424003. arXiv:1407.0363. Bibcode:2014JPhA...47P4003L. doi:10.1088/1751-8113/47/42/424003. S2CID 40332044.
  14. ↑ "Alain Aspect, prix Nobel de physique 2022". cnrs.fr.
  15. ↑ "Alain Aspect | Royal Society".
  16. ↑ "Alain Aspect nommé membre honoraire d'Optica". cnrs.fr. 4 March 2022.
  17. ↑ "(33163) Alainaspect". Minor Planet Center. Retrieved 20 November 2019.
  18. ↑ "MPC/MPO/MPS Archive". Minor Planet Center. Retrieved 20 November 2019.
  19. ↑ "Alain Aspect". ae-info.org.
  20. ↑ "Alain Aspect's Curriculum Vitae" (PDF).
  21. ↑ "Alain Aspect | Optica". www.optica.org. Retrieved 9 May 2024.
  22. ↑ "Our Scientific Advisory Committee". EssilorLuxottica. EssilorLuxottica. Retrieved 1 July 2026.

Publications

  • Bardou, François; Bouchaud, Jean-Philippe; Aspect, Alain; Cohen-Tannoudji, Claude (2002). Lévy Statistics and Laser Cooling. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-00422-0.
  • Bell, J. S. (3 June 2004). Speakable and Unspeakable in Quantum Mechanics. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-81862-1.
  • Grynberg, Gilbert; Aspect, Alain; Fabre, Claude (2 September 2010). Introduction to Quantum Optics. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-55112-0.
allikas: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alain_Aspect