From Einstein and Bell to Quantum Technologies: Entanglement in Action

As pointed out by Albert Einstein, and confirmed by the violation of Bell’s inequalities, entanglement of separated particles is an extraordinary feature of quantum mechanics, suggesting some kind of non-locality. It is now used in quantum technologies. After recalling Bell’s inequalities and their experimental tests, I will show how the notion of non-locality provides fruitful intuitions for some quantum communication methods.

Alain Aspect is an alumnus of ENSET Cachan (now ENS Paris-Saclay) and Orsay University. He is currently a professor at the Institut dOptique-Universit Paris-Saclay and at the cole Polytechnique. His doctoral thesis (1983), at the Institut dOptique, focused on experimental tests of the foundations of quantum mechanics (tests of Bells inequalities, for which he was awarded the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics, along with John Clauser and Anton Zeilinger). After experiments on single photons with Philippe Grangier (1984-86), he worked on laser cooling of atoms at the Kastler Brossel laboratory of ENS Paris with Claude Cohen-Tannoudji, Jean Dalibard and Christophe Salomon. The group he founded at the Institut dOptique in 1993 focuses on atomic quantum optics and atomic quantum simulators with degenerate gases.

Aspect is a member of the Acadmie des Sciences, the Acadmie des Technologies and several foreign academies (Austria, Belgium, Italy, UK, USA).