Heilborn Lectures
2024-25 Heilborn Lecturer
Alain Aspect
Recipient of the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics
Professor at the Institut d'Optique - Université Paris-Saclay (Augustin Fresnel Chair)
Professor at the École Polytechnique - Institut Polytechnique de Paris
Emeritus Senior Researcher at the CNRS, The French National Centre for Scientific Research
Member of the Académie des Sciences
Lectures:
Tuesday, April 8, 2025
3:30 - 4:30 pm, Technological Institute L211
From Einstein’s Doubts to Quantum Technologies: Non-Locality in Action
Abstract: As pointed out by Einstein, and confirmed by the violation of Bell’s inequalities, entanglement of separated particles is an extraordinary feature of quantum mechanics, suggesting some kind of non-locality. It is now used in quantum technologies. After recalling what are Bell’s inequalities and their experimental tests, I will show how the notion of non-locality provides fruitful intuitions for some quantum communication methods.
Wednesday, April 9, 2025
3:30 - 4:30 pm, Technological Institute L211
Wave-Particle Duality for a Single Photon
Abstract: The first quantum revolution is based on wave-particle duality for individual particles. Contrary to a widely spread belief, the direct observation of wave-particle duality for light took place only in 1986, after the development of the first single photon source. Modern single photon sources play an important role in the development of quantum technologies.
Public Lecture:
Thursday, April 10, 2025
4:00 - 5:30 pm, Technological Institute LR2
The Two Quantum Revolutions: From Concepts to Applications
Abstract: The first quantum revolution, based on wave-particle duality, has led to the society of information and communication. The second quantum revolution is based on entanglement. Will its applications lead to a new societal revolution?
Alain Aspect is an alumnus of ENSET Cachan (now ENS Paris-Saclay) and Orsay University. He is currently Professor at the Institut d'Optique-Université Paris-Saclay and Professor at the École Polytechnique. His doctoral thesis (1983), at the Institut d'Optique, focused on experimental tests of the foundations of quantum mechanics (tests of Bell's inequalities, for which he was awarded the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics along with John Clauser and Anton Zeilinger). After experiments on single photons, with Philippe Grangier (1984-86), he worked on laser cooling of atoms at the Kastler Brossel laboratory of ENS Paris, with Claude Cohen-Tannoudji, Jean Dalibard and Christophe Salomon. The group he founded at the Institut d'Optique in 1993 focuses on atomic quantum optics and atomic quantum simulators with degenerate gases.
Alain Aspect is a member of the Académie des Sciences, the Académie des Technologies and several foreign academies (Austria, Belgium, Italy, UK, USA).
To learn more about the Heilborn Lectures and for a list of past Lectures, click here.