Alain Aspect

Alain Aspect ( born June 15, 1947 in Agen ) is a French physicist whose main research area is quantum optics.

Life

Around 1980 Aspect worked with Jean Dalibard and Gerard Roger of an experimental verification of the EPR effect. In an experiment in 1982, they have shown that the Bell 's inequalities are violated during measurements on entangled photons. The experimental results falsify Einstein's conception of local hidden variables.

As a result of the experiment remain essentially two interpretations of quantum mechanics left: they are either (a) spooky (ie experimentally elusive ) Remote effects at work, or ( b ) the quantum mechanical description of the experimental procedures makes use of a formalism whose objects as not readily immediate constituents of reality must be considered. This last view is the view of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics of Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg. Against this interpretation had been directed by the spooky action at a distance actually Einstein's dictum.

Aspect working on the research laboratory Charles Fabry of the Institut d' Optique in Orsay, which is operated jointly by the CNRS and the University Paris-Sud. He is also a professor at the École polytechnique. He is currently working on Bose -Einstein condensates. He is a member of the Academy of Sciences in France.

Awards (selection)

Bibliography

  • Experimental Realization of Einstein - Podolsky-Rosen -Bohm thought experiment: A New Violation of Bell's Inequalities, A. Aspect, P. Grangier, and G. Roger, Physical Review Letters, Vol 49, Iss. 2, pp.91 -94 (1982 ) doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.49.91
  • Experimental Test of Bell's Inequalities Using Time - Varying Analyzers, A. Aspect, J. Dalibard and G. Roger, Physical Review Letters, Vol 49, Iss. 25, pp. 1804-1807 (1982 ) doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.49.1804
  • Manipulation of neutral atom: experiments, Physics Reports, Volume 219, 1992, pp. 141-152 ( Proc. 20th Solvay Conference on Quantum Optics )
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