Nobel Prize in Physics awarded for quantum optics
Serge Haroche and David Wineland have been awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for their independent work on ways to measure and manipulate individual particles while preserving their quantum mechanical nature. According to the Nobel Foundation, the physicists used ways that were previously thought unattainable.
Although working separately, the two researchers apparently had many things in common. Wineland, group leader at the US National Institute of Standards and Technology, trapped ions and controlled and measured them with photons. Haroche, a professor at College de France and Ecole Normale Superior, took the opposite approach: controlling and measuring trapped photons by sending atoms through a trap.
Both Laureates work in the field of quantum optics, studying the fundamental interaction between light and matter. Their research is said by the Nobel Foundation to have enabled the first steps towards building quantum computers.
The work has also led to the construction of extremely precise clocks that could become the future basis for a new standard of time, offering a precision more than 100 times greater than today's caesium based clocks.