The winners of the Nobel Prize in Physics are Alain Aspect, John Clauser e Anton Zeilinger, defined as “pioneers of quantum information”. With their experiments, explained the Nobel Committee, the three winners were able to “control and study the particles that are in an intertwined state”. In this state, one of the most peculiar and anti-intuitive in physics, “what happens to one particle determines what happens to the other, even if they are very distant”.
The names were announced Tuesday morning by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm. Aspect, French, 75, is affiliated with the Paris-Saclay University, and is also part of the Accademia dei Lincei in Italy. Clauser, American, 80, is the founder of JF Clauser & Assoc. in California. Zeilinger, 77, Austrian, is from the University of Vienna.
Interviewed by the Nobel Committee, Aspect called on world scientists to stand united against nationalisms: “It is important that researchers do not lose the sense of their international community, at a time when the world is not doing too well and nationalism is it imposes in many countries “.
Applications: quantum computers and secure communications
This “remote embrace” of particles, which in technical jargon is called “entanglement”, gives birth to a new, very complicated, branch of physics, full of applications such as quantum computers and hacker-proof encryption systems.
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Zeilinger in particular was able to demonstrate the possibility of quantum teleportation, which occurs when a particle transfers its state to another distant particle, becoming in fact identical to the first. The experiment is still far from resembling the teleportation we saw in Star Trek and only applies to individual particles (not people).
These are very important applications from a strategic point of view. The most advanced country in their study is currently considered China, which is investing heavily in it. Europe and the United States are also pushing the accelerator, with several billion in research funds on each of the two continents.
Einstein’s skepticism
Einstein himself was skeptical of this phenomenon, so much so that he commented: “God does not play dice”. Yet the three Nobel laureates have shown that two distant particles, under certain conditions, can behave like perfect twins. They can even keep memories of each other’s past.
For many years, the Swedish Academy had been expected to award a Nobel Prize in quantum physics and Aspect, Clauser and Zeiliger were considered among the favorites. “The ineffable effects of quantum mechanics are starting to find applications,” explained the Nobel Committee.
Quantum computing and power relations between nations
“Quantum computers are already starting to be built and used,” he explains Tommaso Calarco, director of the Institute of Quantum Control at the Jülich Research Center, Germany, and president of the European Community’s Quantum Community Network. “Europe started a few years ago with a one billion loan for the project called Quantum Flagship. Now we are already seven billion, and this time Italy is not among the most backward countries”.
The phenomenon of entanglement is very complex to understand, but it has a concrete effect on the power of nations. “Strategic applications are of two types” sums up Calarco. “Quantum computers are much more powerful and faster than normal ones. If today a bit can only take on one value at a time, zero or one, a quantum bit, or qubit, it can be zero and one at the same time.”
“If I ask a computer – says Calarco – to find the quickest way out of a labyrinth, a machine of today will try all the roads one after the other, a quantum computer will try them all together, taking infinitely less time. time”.
The second strategic application of quantum computing concerns secure communications. “Two particles that contain useful information can be sent to two recipients. As long as they are entangled, or entangled, no one else can read them. If a spy intervenes to discover the encrypted message, the entangled state is immediately lost and the recipients realize. to have been intercepted “.
Zeilinger, Calarco continues, “realized this application 25 years ago and proposed to the European Space Agency to build a satellite to send quantum messages. ESA did nothing. Meanwhile, a Chinese student of Zeilinger returned home. and received a couple of billion from his government. ” In 2017, the Beijing Micius satellite, dedicated to quantum communications, received the first message from Earth. “Since then, other countries have also realized the importance of these applications”, comments Calarco.
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Last year the award went to two scientists who have studied the climate crisis (the American-Japanese Syukuro Manabe and the German Klaus Hasselmann), together with the Italian Giorgio Parisi, expert in complex systems. Parisi commented on today’s prize as follows: “It is a Nobel that puts the progress of quantum mechanics at the center. In the 70s we thought we had understood it in its entirety, but today it has been restarted”.
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The winners share a € 920,000 prize and this year, for the first time since the start of the pandemic, they will be welcomed into the royal residence in Stockholm for a gala ceremony in early December.
Yesterday, Monday, the Prize for Medicine was awarded to the Swedish Svante Paabo, who studied the DNA of ancient men, especially Neanderthals, to understand their history. Wednesday morning will be the turn of chemistry, Thursday of literature and Friday of peace. Next Monday, October 10, the Nobel Prize for economics will be announced. The award procedures were established by the Swedish inventor (his own, among others, the patent of dynamite), Alfred Nobel.
Nobel, for fear of being remembered for the invention of an instrument of destruction, wrote in his will that the prize would go to the person “who has contributed most to the well-being of humanity”.