Tangled future of quantum computing explained by French Nobel winner

French physicist Alain Aspect was one of those awarded the 2022 Nobel Prize in physics. The 75-year-old shares the honour with John Clauser and Anton Zellinger for pioneering work on quantum entanglement.

French physicist Alain Aspect was one of three men who shared the 2022 Nobel Prize in physics for their work on quantum entanglement. © AP/Michel Euler

"An immense pleasure and a big surprise, because you have no warning. You don't know it's going to happen," Aspect told RFI of his first reaction to the announcement.

Speaking about his research, Aspect said he started working on an experiment to demonstrate entanglement, one of the most mysterious properties of quantum mechanics, in 1975. 

"Entanglement means that I have two particles which have interacted but are now far from each other so that there is no direct link between them.

L'intrication quantique, Einstein lui-même n’y croyait pas ! Sur ce phénomène reposent aujourd'hui les promesses de l'informatique quantique. Félicitations à Alain Aspect, chercheur à Paris-Saclay et Polytechnique, à John F. Clauser et à Anton Zeilinger pour ce Nobel de physique.

— Emmanuel Macron (@EmmanuelMacron) October 4, 2022

"In classical physics, you can say that the whole system is just the addition of the first particle and the second one. But in quantum physics, the property of the two particles together is greater than the addition of the properties of the first and the second one," he said.

Aspect started his experiment at the National Optical Institute, located just outside Paris. But no one had the expertise or techniques he needed.

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"I had to go to various labs to learn how to use this, how to use that, how to build a vacuum chamber, how to build a special kind of laser, and so on. So it took a long time, until 1982," he said.

Entanglement is at the core of technologies such as quantum cryptography and quantum computing which are currently witnessing a big boost in the world of research.