2016 Gold Medal Award

The organizations are recognized for exceptional scientific achievement culminating in a loophole-free test of Bell’s theorem using entangled photon pairs. Nearly twenty NIST employees and associates from PML and ITL contributed to this achievement. The test proves quantum theory complete (with a maximum chance of an alternate theory accounting for the results at about 1 in 170 million), thereby yielding clear evidence against the 1935 paper of Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen. NIST’s achievement is the first experiment to close three major “loopholes” that plagued earlier tests. The loopholes were closed through the use of NIST-developed single-photon detectors, single-photon sources, and random-number generators. For additional information, please see the published paper: http://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.115.250402 The following NIST employees and associates from PML and ITL contributed to this achievement: Lynden K. Shalm (PML, Boulder), Peter Bierhorst (ITL, Boulder), Michael Wayne (PML, Gaithersburg), Martin Stevens (PML, Boulder), Thomas Gerrits (PML, Boulder), Scott Glancy (ITL, Boulder), Shane (Michael) Allman (PML, Boulder), Kevin Coakley (ITL, Boulder), Shellee Dyer (PML, Boulder), Carson Hodge (PML, Boulder), Adriana Lita (PML, Boulder), Varun Verma (PML, Boulder), Camilla Lambrocco (PML, Boulder), Edward Tortorici (PML, Boulder), Alan Migdall (PML, Gaithersburg), Josh Bienfang (PML, Gaithersburg), Rich Mirin (PML, Boulder), Emanuel (Manny) Knill (ITL, Boulder), Sae Woo Nam (PML, Boulder)