Few days ago, the new Nobel Prize in Physics was announced by the Royal Swedish Academy of Science. This year Serge Haroche (left in the picture) of the College of France in Paris, and David Wineland (right in the picture) of the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Boulder, Colorado, have been awarded for the ground-breaking experimental methods that enable measuring and manipulation of individual quantum systems.
They have independently invented and developed methods for measuring and
manipulating individual particles while preserving their
quantum-mechanical nature, in ways that were previously thought
unattainable. Haroche uses atoms as a sensitive probe of light particles trapped in a cavity, whereas Wineland takes the opposite approach, using light to measure the quantum states of atoms. Their ground-breaking methods have enabled to
take the very first steps towards building a new type of super fast
computer based on quantum physics. 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. The research has also led
to the construction of extremely precise clocks that could become the
future basis for a new standard of time, with more than hundred-fold
greater precision than present-day caesium clocks.
