Alain Aspect, John F. Clauser, and Anton Zeilinger have won the Nobel Prize in Physics for their path-breaking work in quantum mechanics and the field of quantum information.

On the morning of October 4, the Nobel Prize organizing committee in Stockholm recognized the trio “for experiments with entangled photons, establishing the violation of Bell inequalities and pioneering quantum information science.”

The winners made fundamental contributions to the understanding of quantum entanglement, and their experimental work demonstrated that entanglement can be exploited for the instantaneous transmission of information via quantum teleportation.

The laureates’ discoveries furthered the ideas of the late physicist John Stewart Bell, whose research demonstrated the non-locality of quantum phenomena, a concept crucial to quantum computing. The experimental tools developed by Aspect, Clauser, and Zeilinger “laid the foundation for a new era of quantum technology,” the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences noted in a news release.

Both Aspect and Zeilinger delivered public lectures at Perimeter in its early years. In 2005, Zeilinger gave a talk about quantum teleportation and shared his insights on a life in science. In 2007, Aspect’s talk traced the history of quantum information from Einstein’s intuition through to the state of the field at the time.

“Aspect, Clauser, and Zeilinger are true pioneers in testing our understanding of quantum theory,” says Perimeter Director Robert Myers. 

“Their ground-breaking work demonstrating quantum entanglement with photons helped lay the foundations of quantum information science. In the coming years, we can expect to see many new breakthroughs that will bear the fingerprints of their seminal research.”