On Oct. 4, 80-year-old John F. Clauser wakened in his California house to the information that he had been awarded the Nobel Prize in physics (opens in new tab). He obtained the prize at a ceremony in Stockholm, Sweden, on Dec. 10 along with Anton Zeilinger and Alain Aspect for his or her work on quantum entanglement.
It was a second of celebration for Clauser, whose groundbreaking experiments with particles of sunshine helped to show key components of quantum mechanics (opens in new tab).
“Everybody wants to win a Nobel Prize,” Clauser mentioned. “I’m very happy.”
But Clauser’s journey to profitable the most important prize in science was not at all times easy.
In the Nineteen Sixties, Clauser was a graduate physics scholar at Columbia University. By probability, he discovered an article within the college library that might form his profession and lead him to pursue the experimental work that ultimately earned him the Nobel Prize.
The article, written by Irish physicist John Stewart Bell and printed within the journal Physics in 1964, thought of whether or not quantum mechanics gave an entire description of actuality or not. At the guts of the query was the phenomenon of quantum entanglement.
Quantum entanglement occurs when two or extra particles hyperlink up in a sure means, and irrespective of how far aside they’re in space, their states stay linked.
For instance, think about particle A flying off in a single path and particle B within the different. If the 2 particles are entangled — which signifies that they share a joint quantum state — a measurement of particle A will instantly decide the measurement consequence of particle B. It does not matter if the particles are just a few toes or a number of light-years aside — their long-distance quantum affair is instantaneous.
This chance was rejected by Albert Einstein and his colleagues within the Thirties. Instead, they argued that there exists an “element of reality” that’s not accounted for in quantum mechanics.
In his 1964 article, Bell argued that it was potential to experimentally take a look at whether or not quantum mechanics failed in describing such components of actuality. He referred to as these unaccounted-for components “hidden variables.”
In specific, Bell had native variables in thoughts. This signifies that they solely have an effect on the bodily setup of their instant neighborhood. As Clauser defined, “If you put stuff locally in a box and make a measurement in another box very far away, the experimental parameter choices made in one box can’t affect the experimental results in the other box, and vice versa.”
Clauser determined to check Bell’s proposal. But when he wished to do the experiment, his advisor urged him to rethink.
“The hardest part initially was to get the opportunity,” Clauser recalled. “Everybody was telling me that it was not possible, why bother!”
The quantum laboratory
In 1972, Clauser lastly obtained an opportunity to check Bell’s proposal whereas in a postdoctoral place at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California. He joined forces with doctoral scholar Stuart Freedman. Together they arrange a laboratory full of optical gear.
“Nobody had done this before,” Clauser mentioned. “We didn’t have any money to do anything. We had to build everything from scratch. I got my hands dirty, I got immersed in cutting oil, there were lots of wires and I built lots of electronics.”
Clauser and Freedman managed to create entangled photons by manipulating calcium atoms. The particles of sunshine, or photons, flew into polarizing filters that Clauser and Freedman might rotate relative to one another.
Quantum mechanics predicted {that a} increased quantity of photons would concurrently go the filters than could be the case if the photons’ polarization was decided by native and hidden variables.
Clauser’s and Freedman’s experiment confirmed that the predictions of quantum mechanics had been right. “We consider these results to be strong evidence against local hidden-variable theories,” they wrote in 1972 in Physical Review Letters (opens in new tab).
A troublesome begin
Clauser’s and Freedman’s outcomes had been confirmed in additional experiments by Alain Aspect and Anton Zeilinger.
“My work was in the 70s, Aspect’s was in the 80s, Zeilinger’s was in the 90s,” Clauser mentioned. “We worked sequentially in improving the field.”
But the impression of Clauser’s groundbreaking experiment was not acknowledged instantly.
“Things were difficult,” Clauser recalled. “Everybody said: ‘Nice experiment, but maybe you want to go out and measure some numbers and stop wasting time and money and instead start doing some real physics.'”
It took 50 years till Clauser was awarded with the Nobel Prize for his experimental work. His colleague, Stuart Freedman, died in 2012.
“My associates are long-time dead,” Clauser mentioned. “My claim to fame is that I’ve lived long enough.”
When requested if he has any recommendation to younger researchers in view of his personal preliminary issue, Clauser mentioned: “If you prove something that everybody thinks is true, and you’re the first one to do it, you probably will not be recognized for 50 years. That’s the bad news. The good news is that I had a lot of fun doing this work.”
Quantum reflections
Clauser’s and Freedman’s experiment paved the best way for elaborate applied sciences that use quantum entanglement, akin to quantum computer systems and cryptographic protocols.
When requested if he thinks quantum mechanics is an entire principle, Clauser answered: “I suspect there is a more fundamental theory below it, but that’s purely conjecture. I don’t know what it is. I confess also that I’m totally confused, I have no idea what all of this means.”
John F. Clauser’s quotes have beforehand been printed in an interview that the creator made for the Swedish journal Forskning och Framsteg.
