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Bell Prize goes to scientists who proved “spooky” quantum entanglement is real
The John Stewart Bell Prize for Research on Fundamental Issues in Quantum Mechanics and their Applications (short form: "Bell Prize") was established in 2009, and is awarded every odd-numbered year, for significant contributions first published in the preceding 6 years. The award is meant to recognize major advances relating to the foundations of quantum mechanics and to the applications of these principles – this covers, but is not limited to, quantum information theory, quantum computation, quantum foundations, quantum cryptography, and quantum control. The award is not intended as a "lifetime achievement" award, but rather to highlight the continuing rapid pace of research in these areas, and the fruitful interplay of fundamental research and potential applications. It is intended to cover even-handedly both of these aspects, and to include both theoretical and experimental contributions.
The award is funded and managed by the University of Toronto Centre for Quantum Information and Quantum Control (CQIQC), but the award selection is to be handled by an arms-length selection committee which rotates on a 4-year cycle.
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Sae Woo Nam’s team at NIST is honored for a landmark experiment which, in conjunction with related results elsewhere, put to rest a debate about the nature of quantum reality that has persisted for eight decades. The dispute, first raised by Albert Einstein and colleagues, involves a condition called “entanglement.” The theory of quantum mechanics posits that two entangled particles can be so strongly correlated that a measurement made on one will determine the state of the other – even though the properties are inherently uncertain until the measurement is made, and even if the particles are separated so far that there is no way that one could influence the other without traveling faster than the speed of light. Einstein could not accept that idea of “spooky action at a distance,” and argued that the particles must somehow, at the moment of entanglement, take on a set of “local” properties that determine subsequent measurements.
In the 1960s, Irish physicist John Stewart Bell devised a test to establish the existence of entanglement. And for decades, numerous such “Bell tests” produced results consistent with quantum theory. But none provided conclusive evidence because each was subject to one or more loopholes that allowed a possible alternative interpretation of the findings. But in 2015, Nam’s group – along with separate results from teams in the Netherlands and Austria --succeeded in conducting the first “loophole-free” Bell tests, thus bringing the long-standing question about entanglement to an unequivocal conclusion.
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