Download Serge Haroche

法美兩學者榮獲2012諾貝爾物理獎這兩位諾貝爾獎獲得者
「提出了突破性的實驗方法，使測量和操控個量子體系成為可能。」
相較其他獎項，
諾貝爾物理學
獎評審委員會
較傾向授與年
輕一輩的學者
這份榮耀。物
理學獎平均獲
獎年齡為54歲，
在諾貝爾6個獎
項中最年輕。
諾貝爾文學獎
獲獎平均年齡
相對成熟10歲。
瑞典皇家科學院諾貝爾獎評審委員會9日宣佈，法國科學家塞爾日．阿羅甚(Serge
Haroche)與美國科學家大衛．維因蘭德(David Wineland)獲得2012年諾貝爾物理學獎。
(JONATHAN NACKSTRAND/AFP)----68歲的阿羅甚和他在法國高等師範學校的同事讓‧
米歇爾‧雷蒙，2008年在對一個密封光子的光粒子的觀察中，成功觀察到量子如何過渡
到傳統物態的過程。 在這一實驗中，他們使用內部全部裝有鏡子的裝置，能夠長時間保
留光子，並最小程度的干擾光子從而進行觀察的方法。
這一實驗方法，能夠觀察到在量子世界中非典型的光子過渡到傳統物理的完美狀態。他
們把這一發生在他們眼前的現象稱為「相乾性退化」。 和阿羅甚一樣，出生於1944年
大衛‧維因蘭德曾在量子光學領域，研究光與物質之間的基本相互作用。
兩位獲獎者將分享八百萬瑞典克朗約合120萬美元的獎金。
Serge Haroche
Collège de France
and Ecole
Normale
Supérieure, Paris,
France
David J. Wineland
National Institute o
Standards and
Technology (NIST)
and University of
Colorado Boulder,
CO, USA
2012 Nobel Prize in Physics
The 2012 Nobel Prize in
Physics was awarded jointly
to Serge Haroche and David
J. Wineland "for groundbreaking experimental
methods that enable
measuring and
manipulation of individual
quantum systems".
Particle control in a quantum world
Serge Haroche and David J. Wineland 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.
The Nobel Laureates have opened the door to a new era of experimentation with quantum physics by
demonstrating the direct observation of individual quantum particles without destroying them. For single
particles of light or matter the laws of classical physics cease to apply and quantum physics takes over.
But single particles are not easily isolated from their surrounding environment and they lose their
mysterious quantum properties as soon as they interact with the outside world. Thus many seemingly
bizarre phenomena predicted by quantum physics could not be directly observed, and researchers could
only carry out thought experiments that might in principle manifest these bizarre phenomena.
Through their ingenious laboratory methods Haroche and Wineland together with their research groups
have managed to measure and control very fragile quantum states, which were previously thought
inaccessible for direct observation. The new methods allow them to examine, control and count the
particles.
Their methods have many things in common. David Wineland traps electrically charged atoms, or ions,
controlling and measuring them with light, or photons.
Serge Haroche takes the opposite approach: he controls and measures trapped photons, or particles of
light, by sending atoms through a trap.
Both Laureates work in the field of quantum optics studying the fundamental interaction between light
and matter, a field which has seen considerable progress since the mid-1980s. Their ground-breaking
methods have enabled this field of research 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.
Figure 1. Nobel Prize
awarded for mastering
particles. The Laureates have
managed to make trapped,
individual particles to behave
according to the rules of
quantum physics.
Figure 4. Schrödinger’s cat. In 1935 the
Austrian physicist and Nobel Laureate
Erwin Schrödinger described a thought
experiment with a cat in a box in order
to illustrate the absurd consequences
of moving between the micro-world of
quantum physics and our every-day
macro-world. A quantum system,
particles, atoms and other stuff of the
micro-world, can be in two states
simultaneously, by physicists called a
superposition of states. In
Schrödinger’s thought experiment the
cat in the box is in a superposition, and
thus both dead and alive. Now, if you
peek inside the box, you risk killing the
cat because the quantum
superposition is so sensitive to
interaction with the environment that
the slightest attempt to observe the
cat would immediately ‘collapse’ the
‘cat-state’ to one of the two possible
outcomes – dead or alive.