Experimental confirmation of quantum entanglement (Bell inequality violation)
Confirmación experimental del entrelazamiento cuántico (violación de las desigualdades de Bell)
- Date
- 1982 · confidence high
- Place
- Institute of Optics, Orsay, France
- Credited to
- Alain Aspect; John Clauser; Anton Zeilinger
- People
- 👤 Alain Aspect1947–👤 Anton Zeilinger1945–👤 John Clauser1942–
- Field
- Cosmos & Earth
What was discovered
Pairs of entangled photons violate Bell's inequalities even when the detectors are switched while the photons are in flight, ruling out local hidden variables. Entanglement is real, and nature is non-local in Bell's sense.
Zeilinger closed the remaining loopholes with Hensen (Delft) and others in 2015; 2022 Nobel Prize for Aspect, Clauser and Zeilinger.
What it led to
- Quantum information: cryptography, teleportation and computing
- Loophole-free experiments (2015, Delft, Vienna, NIST)
- Satellite-based quantum communication (Micius, 2017)
- 2022 Nobel Prize
Built on
- Bell's theorem1964
- Clauser and Freedman experiment (Berkeley, 1972)
- Lasers and calcium atomic cascades
Made possible
- Micius quantum communication satellite2016-2017
- Quantum key distribution
- Quantum networks
- Entangled photon sources