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SUMMARY:From the Einstein-Bohr debate to Quantum Information : a new Quant
 um Revolution
DTSTART:20140210T161500
DTEND:20140210T171500
DTSTAMP:20260408T020421Z
UID:f3c19bd68d320c52b792dbd7ff52f318d32496aefce1a3a2bb31fcf0
CATEGORIES:Conferences - Seminars
DESCRIPTION:Prof. Alain Aspect\, Institut d'Optique\, Palaiseau\nBio: Aspe
 ct is a graduate of the École Normale Supérieure de Cachan (ENS Cachan).
  He passed the 'agrégation' in physics in 1969 and received his master's 
 degree from Université d’Orsay. He then did his national service\, teac
 hing for three years in Cameroon.\nIn the early 1980s\, while working on h
 is PhD thesis[1] from the lesser academic rank of lecturer\, he performed 
 the elusive "Bell test experiments" that showed that Albert Einstein\, Bor
 is Podolsky and Nathan Rosen's reductio ad absurdum of quantum mechanics\,
  namely that it implied 'ghostly action at a distance'\, did in fact appea
 r to be realised when two particles were separated by an arbitrarily large
  distance (see EPR paradox). A correlation between their wave functions re
 mained\, as they were once part of the same wave-function that was not dis
 turbed before one of the child particles was measured.\nIf quantum theory 
 is correct\, the determination of an axis direction for the polarization m
 easurement of one photon\, forcing the wave function to 'collapse' onto th
 at axis\, will influence the measurement of its twin. This influence occur
 s despite any experimenters not knowing which axes have been chosen by the
 ir distant colleagues\, and at distances that disallow any communication b
 etween the two photons\, even at the speed of light.\nAspect's experiments
  were considered to provide overwhelming support to the thesis that Bell's
  inequalities are violated in its CHSH version. However\, his results were
  not completely conclusive\, since there were so-called loopholes that all
 owed for alternative explanations that comply with local realism. See loca
 l hidden variable theory.\nStated more simply\, the experiment provides st
 rong evidence that a quantum event at one location can affect an event at 
 another location without any obvious mechanism for communication between t
 he two locations. This has been called "spooky action at a distance" by Ei
 nstein (who doubted the physical reality of this effect). However\, these 
 experiments do not allow faster-than-light communication\, as the events t
 hemselves appear to be inherently random.\nAfter his works on Bell's inequ
 alites\, he turned toward studies of laser cooling of neutral atoms and is
  now mostly involved in Bose-Einstein condensates related experiments.\nAs
 pect was deputy director of the French "grande école" SupOptique until 19
 94. He is a member of the French Academy of Sciences and French Academy of
  Technologies\, and professor at the École Polytechnique. In 2005 he was 
 awarded the gold medal of the Centre national de la recherche scientifique
 \, where he is currently Research Director. The 2010 Wolf Prize in physics
  was awarded to Aspect\, Anton Zeilinger and John Clauser. October 7th\, 2
 013\, Aspect was awarded the Danish Niels Bohr International Gold Medal.\n
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STATUS:CONFIRMED
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