A French-American duo shared the 2012 Nobel Prize in physics on Tuesday for experiments on quantum particles that have already resulted in ultra-precise clocks and may one day help lead to computers many times faster than those in use today. Serge Haroche of France and American David Wineland showed in the 1990s how to observe individual particles while preserving their bizarre quantum properties something that scientists had struggled to do before. A quantum particle is one that is isolated from everything else. In this situation an atom or electron or photon takes on strange properties. It can be in two places at once for example. It behaves in some ways like a wave. But these properties are instantly changed when it interacts with something else such as when somebody observes it. Working separately the two scientists both 68 developed ingenious laboratory methods that allowed them to manage and measure and control fragile quantum states the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said. Wineland a physicist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology NIST and the University of Colorado traps ions - electrically charged atoms - and measures them with light while Haroche controls and measures photons or light particles. Wineland said he was sleeping when his wife answered the phone at 330 a.m. local time in Denver 1030 GMT. He was utterly shocked even though his name had come up before. It s a bit overwhelming Wineland said. I think you know there s always that kind of possibility but I must say that I had there were no rumblings at all that this might happen this year. So it really was a surprise. Haroche a professor at the College de France and Ecole Normale Superieure in Paris told a news conference in Paris that he felt before the prize was announced that he probably had a ten percent chance of winning it saying there were many other possible winners in his field. Haroche said he hoped his and Wineland s finding might make it possible for information to be stored in these photons and that that information could be used afterwards to develop a more of less sophisticated quantum process. The physics prize was the second of the 2012 Nobel Prizes to be announced with the medicine award going Monday to stem cell pioneers John Gurdon of Britain and Japan s Shinya Yamanaka. Each award is worth 8 million kronor or about 1.2 million US dollars. Only two women have won the physics prize since it was first awarded in 1901 Marie Curie in 1903 and Maria Goeppert-Mayer in 1963. The prizes are always handed out on December 10 the anniversary of prize founder Alfred Nobel s death in 1896.

• published: 31 Oct 2013
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