Nobel Prize in Physics 2022
Alain Aspect, John F. Clauser and Anton Zeilinger will receive the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2022. | © Pictures: Ill. Niklas Elmehed © Nobel Prize Outreach

Nobel Prize in Physics 2022

Alain Aspect, John F. Clauser and Anton Zeilinger will be honored with the prestigious award in 2022 for their groundbreaking research.

4. October 2022 | by Thorsten Naeser / Veit Ziegelmaier

Alain Aspect, John F. Clauser and Anton Zeilinger are the winners of this year's Nobel Prize in Physics. The prize was awarded for experiments with entangled photons, establishing the violation of Bell inequalities and pioneering quantum information science.

Alain Aspect, John Clauser and Anton Zeilinger have each conducted groundbreaking experiments using entangled quantum states, where two particles behave like a single unit even when they are separated. Their results have cleared the way for new technology based upon quantum information.

John Clauser developed John Bell’s ideas, leading to a practical experiment. When he took the measurements, they supported quantum mechanics by clearly violating a Bell inequality. This means that quantum mechanics cannot be replaced by a theory that uses hidden variables. Some loopholes remained after John Clauser’s experiment. Alain Aspect developed the setup, using it in a way that closed an important loophole. He was able to switch the measurement settings after an entangled pair had left its source, so the setting that existed when they were emitted could not affect the result.

Using refined tools and long series of experiments, Anton Zeilinger started to use entangled quantum states. Among other things, his research group has demonstrated a phenomenon called quantum teleportation, which makes it possible to move a quantum state from one particle to one at a distance.