Nobel laureate Alain Aspect met with young JLO employees

Nobel Prize laureate for experiments with quantum-entangled photons, Professor Alain Aspect, visited the Institute of Physics of the Czech Academy of Sciences. At the FZU headquarters in Prague, he delivered a lecture titled "From Einstein and Bell to Quantum Technologies: Entanglement in Action". Three representatives from the Joint Laboratory of Optics of Palacký University and the Institute of Physics of the Czech Academy of Sciences attended both the lecture and the subsequent discussion.

During the hour-and-a-half-long lecture, Alain Aspect guided the audience through the topic of the EPR paradox, from its definition by Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen, through the formulation of Bell’s inequalities, to his experiments, for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2022, along with J. F. Clauser and A. Zeilinger. The audience appreciated not only the clarity with which Professor Aspect presented the complex subject of the extraordinary features of quantum mechanics but also the historical context that only a scientist who has been at the forefront of one of the revolutions in physics could provide.

After the lecture, the Nobel laureate met with thirteen young postdocs and doctoral students, including Kateřina Jiráková, Vojtěch Trávníček, and Josef Kadlec from the Joint Laboratory of Optics. The young scientists first briefly introduced their research to Professor Aspect and then engaged him with their questions. Professor Aspect, utilizing his extensive knowledge of modern aspects of the field, willingly shared not only his expert opinions but also his passion and enthusiasm for physical research with the participants.