Alain Aspect

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Alain Aspect ({{#invoke:IPA|main}}; born 15 June 1947<ref name="Nobel bio">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>) is a French physicist noted for his experimental work on quantum entanglement.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref><ref name="Aspect2007">Template:Cite journal</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

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".Template:R

Education

Aspect is a graduate of the École Normale Supérieure de Cachan (ENS Cachan, today part of Paris-Saclay University).<ref name="Paris-Saclay bio"/> 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.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

In the early 1980s, while working on his doctorat d'État (habilitation thesis),<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> 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).<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Aspect received an honorary doctorate from Heriot-Watt University in 2008.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Research

{{#invoke:Labelled list hatnote|labelledList|Main article|Main articles|Main page|Main pages}} 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.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>

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.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

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Aspect at the École Polytechnique (Polytechnic Institute of Paris).

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.<ref name="Paris-Saclay bio"/>

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Alain Aspect at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics, 2013.
File:Alain Aspect, professeur à l’Université Paris-Saclay et à l’École polytechnique, est co-lauréat du Prix Nobel de Physique 2022. (52406154475).jpg
Alain Aspect at Institut d'Optique, October 4, 2022.

Distinctions

Aspect was elected a Foreign Member of the Royal Society (ForMemRS) in 2015.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> His certificate of election reads Template:Quote

In 2005 he was awarded the gold medal of the Centre national de la recherche scientifique, where he is Research Director. The 2010 Wolf Prize in physics was awarded to Aspect, Anton Zeilinger and John Clauser. In 2013 Aspect was awarded both the Niels Bohr International Gold Medal and the UNESCO Niels Bohr Medal. In 2011, he was assigned the Medal of the City of Paris. In 2013, he was also awarded the Balzan Prize for Quantum Information Processing and Communication. In 2014, he was named Officer of the Legion of Honour.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Asteroid 33163 Alainaspect, discovered by astronomers at Caussols in 1998, was named after him.<ref name="MPC-object" /> The official Template:MoMP was published by the Minor Planet Center on 8 November 2019 (Template:Small).<ref name="MPC-Circulars-Archive" />

Aspect was awarded the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics alongside John F. Clauser and Anton Zeilinger "for experiments with entangled photons, establishing the violation of Bell's inequalities and pioneering quantum information science".<ref name="nobelprize"/>

On 26 June 2025, he was elected to the Académie Française.

Honours and awards

Accolades received by Aspect include the following:<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Honours

Awards

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

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Acknowledgement

Honorary degrees

Publications

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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
  • Si Einstein avait su, Paris, ed. Odile Jacob, 2025

References

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Publications

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