Nobel prize for quantum physics work

The bizarre world of quantum physics – a realm supporting the notion of an object being in two places at once – has been recognised through the 2012 Nobel Prize for Physics, awarded this year to Serge Haroche of France and American David Wineland.

The two researchers developed different ways to manipulate the smallest possible particles of matter and light as a way to demonstrate the strange behaviour seen in quantum mechanics.

They share the prize, worth eight million Swedish crowns this year, for their work, which has opened up the possibility of building quantum computers and the world’s most accurate clocks. "Perhaps the quantum computer will change our everyday lives in this century in the same radical way as the classical computer did in the last century,” said the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences when making the award.

Mr Haroche (68) is based at the École Normale Supérieure in France and Mr Wineland (68) is based at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Boulder, Colorado.

Most objects behave according to the classical laws of physics, but these laws break down when you shrink down to the size of an atom or a single particle or photon of light. In this quantum mechanical world, a particle can be in two places at once and in different states. Particles can be “entangled” despite being kilometres apart.

Mr Wineland studied this behaviour by trapping charged atoms and then studied them by hitting them with photons. Haroche trapped photons and then smacked them with atoms to study their behaviour.

"This year's Nobel Prize recognises some of the most incredible experimental tests of the weirder aspects of quantum mechanics," said Jim Al-Khalili, professor of physics at the University of Surrey in Britain.

"Until the last decade or two, some of these results were nothing more than ideas in science fiction or, at best, the wilder imaginations of quantum physicists. Wineland and Haroche and their teams have shown just how strange the quantum world really is and opened up the potential for new technologies undreamt of not so long ago."