Institut d'Optique Graduate School, Campus Polytechnique, Palaiseau

In 1935, with co-authors Podolsky and Rosen, Einstein discovered an amazing quantum situation, where particles in a pair are so strongly correlated that Schrödinger called them "entangled". By analyzing that situation, Einstein concluded that the quantum formalism had to be completed. Niels Bohr immediately opposed that conclusion, and the debate lasted until the death of these two giants of physics, in the fifties. In 1964, John Bell produced his famous inequalities which have allowed experimentalists to settle the debate, and to show that entanglement is indeed a revolutionary concept. Based on that concept, quantum information is a new field where one tries to use entanglement between qubits to develop conceptually new methods for processing and transmitting information. Large scale practical implementation of such concepts might revolutionize our society, as did the laser and the transistor and integrated circuits, most striking applications of the quantum revolution initiated at the eve of the XXth century.

Dr. Aspect's Talk

Dr. Aspect's Web Site

4:00 p.m., Physics Research Building (PRB), Room 1080

Reception at 3:45 p.m., Atrium, PRB