S TA R T S W I T H A B A N G — O C T O B E R 4 , 2 0 2 2

Quantum entanglement wins

2022’s Nobel Prize in physics
They say that nobody understands quantum mechanics. But thanks to these
three pioneers in quantum entanglement, perhaps we do.

Illustration of two entangled particles, separated in space and each with indeterminate properties until they are
measured. It has been experimentally determined that the neither member of the entangled pair exists in a
particular state until the critical moment at which a measurement occurs: the key aspect which enables many
modern quantum technologies.

(Credit: Johan Jamestad/The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences)

KEY TAKEAWAYS

For generations, scientists argued over whether there was truly an

objective, predictable reality for even quantum particles, or whether
quantum "weirdness" was inherent to physical systems. In the 1960s,
John Stewart Bell developed an inequality describing the maximum
possible statistical correlation between two entangled particles: Bell's
inequality. But certain experiments could violate Bell's inequality, and
these three pioneers — John Clauser, Alain Aspect, and Anton Zeilinger
— helped make quantum information systems a bona fide science.

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Ethan Siegel

T
here’s a simple but profound question that physicists, despite all we’ve
learned about the Universe, cannot fundamentally answer: “what is real?”
We know that particles exist, and we know that particles have certain
properties when you measure them. But we also know that the very act of
measuring a quantum state — or even allowing two quanta to interact with one
another — can fundamentally alter or determine what you measure. An objective
reality, devoid of the actions of an observer, does not appear to exist in any sort of
fundamental way.

But that doesn’t mean there aren’t rules that nature must obey. Those rules exist,
even if they’re difficult and counterintuitive to understand. Instead of arguing over
one philosophical approach versus another to uncover the true quantum nature of
reality, we can turn to properly-designed experiments. Even two entangled
quantum states must obey certain rules, and that’s leading to the development of
quantum information sciences: an emerging field with potentially revolutionary
applications. 2022’s Nobel Prize in Physics was just announced, and it’s awarded to
John Clauser, Alain Aspect, and Anton Zeilinger for the pioneering development of
quantum information systems, entangled photons, and the violation of Bell’s
inequalities. It’s a Nobel Prize that’s long overdue, and the science behind it is
particularly mind-bending.
 (Credit: The Nobel Prize in Physics, 2022)

Artwork illustrating the three winners of the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics, for experiments with
entangled particles that established Bell’s inequality violations and pioneered quantum
information science. From left-to-right, the three Nobel Laureates are Alain Aspect, John
Clauser, and Anton Zeilinger.

There are all sorts of experiments we can perform that illustrate the indeterminate
nature of our quantum reality.

Place a number of radioactive atoms in a container and wait a specific amount

of time. You can predict, on average, how many atoms will remain versus how
many will have decayed, but you have no way of predicting which atoms will
and won’t survive. We can only derive statistical probabilities.
Fire a series of particles through a narrowly spaced double slit and you’ll be
able to predict what sort of interference pattern will arise on the screen behind
it. However, for each individual particle, even when sent through the slits one at
a time, you cannot predict where it will land.
Pass a series of particles (that possess quantum spin) through a magnetic field
and half will deflect “up” while half deflect “down” along the direction of the
field. If you don’t pass them through another, perpendicular magnet, they’ll
maintain their spin orientation in that direction; if you do, however, their spin
orientation will once again become randomized.
:
 Certain aspects of quantum physics appear to be totally random. But are they
really random, or do they only appear random because our information about
these systems are limited, insufficient to reveal an underlying, deterministic
reality? Ever since the dawn of quantum mechanics, physicists have argued over
this, from Einstein to Bohr and beyond.
:
 (Credit: MJasK/Wikimedia Commons)

When a particle with quantum spin is passed through a directional magnet, it will split in at
least 2 directions, dependent on spin orientation. If another magnet is set up in the same
direction, no further split will ensue. However, if a third magnet is inserted between the two in a
perpendicular direction, not only will the particles split in the new direction, but the
information you had obtained about the original direction gets destroyed, leaving the particles
to split again when they pass through the final magnet.

But in physics, we don’t decide matters based on arguments, but rather on

experiments. If we can write down the laws that govern reality — and we have a
pretty good idea of how to do that for quantum systems — then we can derive the
expected, probabilistic behavior of the system. Given a good enough
measurement setup and apparatus, we can then test our predictions
experimentally, and draw conclusions based on what we observe.

And if we’re clever, we could even potentially design an experiment that could test
some extremely deep ideas about reality, such as whether there’s a fundamental
indeterminism to the nature of quantum systems until the moment they are
measured, or whether there’s some type of “hidden variable” underlying our
reality that pre-determines what the outcome is going to be, even before we
measure it.

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One special type of quantum system that’s led to a great many key insights
concerning this question is relatively simple: an entangled quantum system. All
you need to do is create an entangled pair of particles, where the quantum state of
one particle is correlated with the quantum state of another. Although,

individually, both have completely random, indeterminate quantum states, there

:
 individually, both have completely random, indeterminate quantum states, there
should be correlations between the properties of both quanta when taken
together.

(Credit: Johan Jamestad/The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences)

Quantum mechanics’ entangled pairs can be compared to a machine that throws out balls of
opposite colours in opposite directions. When Bob catches a ball and sees that it is black, he
immediately knows that Alice has caught a white one. In a theory that uses hidden variables,
the balls had always contained hidden information about what colour to show. However,
quantum mechanics says that the balls were grey until someone looked at them, when one
randomly turned white and the other black. Bell inequalities show that there are experiments
that can differentiate between these cases. Such experiments have proven that quantum
mechanics’ description is correct.

Even at the outset, this seems weird, even for quantum mechanics. It’s generally
said that there’s a speed limit to how quickly any signal — including any type of
information — can travel: at the speed of light. But if you:
:
 information — can travel: at the speed of light. But if you:

create an entangled pair of particles,

and then separate them by a very large distance,
and then measure the quantum state of one of them,
the quantum state of the other one is all-of-a-sudden determined,
not at the speed of light, but rather instantaneously.

This has now been demonstrated across distances of hundreds of kilometers (or
miles) over time intervals of under 100 nanoseconds. If information is being
transmitted between these two entangled particles, it’s being exchanged at speeds
at least thousands of times faster-than-light.

It isn’t as simple, however, as you might think. If one of the particles is measured to
be “spin up,” for example, that doesn’t mean the other will be “spin down” 100% of
the time. Rather, it means that the likelihood that the other is either “spin up” or
“spin down” can be predicted with some statistical degree of accuracy: more than
50%, but less than 100%, depending on the setup of your experiment. The specifics
of this property were derived in the 1960s by John Stewart Bell, whose Bell’s
inequality ensures that the correlations between the measured states of two
entangled particles could never exceed a certain value.
:
 (Credit: APS/Alan Stonebreaker)

By having a source emit a pair of entangled photons, each of which winds up in the hands of
two separate observers, independent measurements of the photons can be performed. The
results should be random, but aggregate results should display correlations. Whether those
correlations are limited by local realism or not depends on whether they obey or violate Bell’s
inequality.

Or rather, that the measured correlations between these entangled states would
never exceed a certain value if there are hidden variables present, but that
standard quantum mechanics — without hidden variables — would necessarily
violate Bell’s inequality, resulting in stronger correlations than expected, under the
right experimental circumstances. Bell predicted this, but the way he predicted it
was, unfortunately, untestable.

And that’s where the tremendous advances by this year’s Nobel Laureates in
physics comes in.

First was the work of John Clauser. The type of work that Clauser did is the kind
that theoretical physicists often greatly underappreciate: he took Bell’s profound,
technically correct, but impractical work and developed them so that a practical
experiment that tested them could be constructed. He’s the “C” behind what’s now
known as the CHSH inequality: where each member of an entangled pair of
particles are in the hands of an observer who has a choice to measure the spin of
their particles in one of two perpendicular directions. If reality exists independent
of the observer, then each individual measurement must obey the inequality; if it
doesn’t, à la standard quantum mechanics, the inequality can be violated.
:
 (Credit: S. Freedman, PhD Thesis/LBNL, 1972)

The experimentally measured ratio R(ϕ)/R_0 as a function of the angle ϕ between the axes of
the polarizers. The solid line is not a fit to the data points, but rather the polarization
correlation predicted by quantum mechanics; it just so happens that the data agrees with
theoretical predictions to an alarming precision, and one that cannot be explained by local,
real correlations between the two photons.

Clauser not only derived the inequality in such a way that it could be tested, but he
designed and performed the critical experiment himself, along with then-PhD-
student Stuart Freedman, determining that it did, in fact, violate Bell’s (and the
CHSH) inequality. Local hidden variable theories, all of a sudden, were shown to
conflict with the quantum reality of our Universe: a Nobel-worthy achievement
indeed!

But, as in all things, the conclusions we can draw from the results of this
experiment are only as good as the assumptions that underlie the experiment
itself. Was Clauser’s work loophole-free, or could there be some special type of
hidden variable that could still be consistent with his measured results?

That’s where the work of Alain Aspect, the second of this year’s Nobel Laureates,
comes in. Aspect realized that, if the two observers were in causal contact with one
another — that is, if one of them could send a message to the other at the speed of
light about their experimental results, and that result could be received before the
other observer measured their result — then one observer’s choice of
:
 other observer measured their result — then one observer’s choice of
measurement could influence the other’s. This was the loophole that Aspect
meant to close.

(Credit: Chad Orzel)

Schematic of the third Aspect experiment testing quantum non-locality. Entangled photons
from the source are sent to two fast switches that direct them to polarizing detectors. The
switches change settings very rapidly, effectively changing the detector settings for the
experiment while the photons are in flight.

In the early 1980s, along with collaborators Phillipe Grangier, Gérard Roger and
Jean Dalibard, Aspect performed a series of profound experiments that greatly
improved upon Clauser’s work on a number of fronts.

He established a violation of Bell’s inequality to much greater significance: by

30+ standard deviations, as opposed to Clauser’s ~6.
He established a greater magnitude violation of Bell’s inequality — 83% of the
theoretical maximum, as opposed to no greater than 55% of the maximum in
prior experiments — than ever before.
And, by rapidly and continuously randomizing which polarizer’s orientation
would be experienced by each photon used in his setup, he ensured that any
“stealth communication” between the two observers would have to occur at
speeds significantly in excess of the speed of light, closing the critical loophole.

That last feat was the most significant, with the critical experiment now widely
known as the third Aspect experiment. If Aspect had done nothing else, the ability
to demonstrate the inconsistency of quantum mechanics with local, real hidden
variables was a profound, Nobel-worthy advance all on its own.
:
 (Credit: Melissa Meister/ThorLabs)

By creating two entangled photons from a pre-existing system and separating them by great
distances, we can observe what correlations they display between them, even from
extraordinarily different locations. Interpretations of quantum physics that demand both
locality and realism cannot account for a myriad of observations, but multiple interpretations
consistent with standard quantum mechanics all appear to be equally good.

But still, some physicists wanted more. After all, were the polarization settings
being truly determined randomly, or could the settings be only pseudorandom:
where some unseen signal, perhaps traveling at light speed or slower, be
transmitted between the two observers, explaining the correlations between
them?

The only way to truly close that latter loophole would be to create two entangled
particles, separate them by a very large distance while still maintaining their
entanglement, and then perform the critical measurements as close to
simultaneously as possible, ensuring that the two measurements were literally
outside of the light-cones of each individual observer.

Only if each observer’s measurements can be established to be truly independent

:
 Only if each observer’s measurements can be established to be truly independent
of one another — with no hope of communication between them, even if you
cannot see or measure the hypothetical signal they’d exchange between them —
can you truly assert that you’ve closed the final loophole on local, real hidden
variables. The very heart of quantum mechanics is at stake, and that’s where the
work of the third of this year’s crop of Nobel Laureates, Anton Zeilinger, comes
into play.

(Credit: MissMJ/Wikimedia Commons)

An example of a light cone, the three-dimensional surface of all possible light rays arriving at
and departing from a point in spacetime. The more you move through space, the less you move
through time, and vice versa. Only things contained within your past light-cone can affect you
today; only things contained within your future light-cone can be perceived by you in the
future. Two events outside of one another’s light-cone cannot exchange communications under
the laws of special relativity.

The way Zeilinger and his team of collaborators accomplished this was nothing
:
 The way Zeilinger and his team of collaborators accomplished this was nothing
short of brilliant, and by brilliant, I mean simultaneously imaginative, clever,
careful, and precise.

1. First, they created a pair of entangled photons by pumping a down-conversion

crystal with laser light.
2. Then, they sent each member of the photon pair through a separate optical
fiber, preserving the entangled quantum state.
3. Next, they separated the two photons by a large distance: initially by about 400
meters, so that the light-travel time between them would be longer than a
microsecond.
4. And finally, they performed the critical measurement, with the timing
difference between each measurement on the order of tens of nanoseconds.

They performed this experiment more than 10,000 times, building up statistics so
robust they set a new record for significance, while closing the “unseeable signal”
loophole. Today, subsequent experiments have extended the distance that
entangled photons have been separated by before being measured to hundreds of
kilometers, including an experiment with entangled pairs found both on Earth’s
surface and in orbit around our planet.
:
 (Credit: S.A. Hamilton et al., 70th International Astronautical Congress, 2019)

Many entanglement-based quantum networks across the world, including networks extending
into space, are being developed to leverage the spooky phenomena of quantum teleportation,
quantum repeaters and networks, and other practical aspects of quantum entanglement.

Zeilinger also, perhaps even more famously, devised the critical setup that
enabled one of the strangest quantum phenomena ever discovered: quantum
teleportation. There’s a famous quantum no-cloning theorem, dictating that you
cannot produce a copy of an arbitrary quantum state without destroying the
original quantum state itself. What Zeilinger’s group, along with Francesco De
Martini’s independent group, were able to experimentally demonstrate was a
scheme for entanglement swapping: where one particle’s quantum state, even
while entangled with another, could be effectively “moved” onto a different
particle, even one that never interacted directly with the particle it’s now
entangled with.

Quantum cloning is still impossible, as the original particle’s quantum properties

are not preserved, but a quantum version of “cut and paste” has been definitively
demonstrated: a profound and Nobel-worthy advance for certain.
:
 (Credit: Getty Images/Shutterstock, modified by E. Siegel)

John Clauser, left, Alain Aspect, center, and Anton Zeilinger, right, are 2022’s Nobel Laureates in
physics for advances in the field and practical applications of quantum entanglement. This
Nobel Prize has been expected for over ~20 years, and this year’s selection is very hard to argue
against based on the merits of the research.

This year’s Nobel Prize isn’t simply a physical curiosity, one that’s profound for
uncovering some deeper truths about the nature of our quantum reality. Yes, it
does indeed do that, but there’s a practical side to it as well: one that hews to the
spirit of the Nobel Prize’s commitment that it be awarded for research conducted
for the betterment of humankind. Owing to the research of Clauser, Aspect, and
Zeilinger, among others, we now understand that entanglement allows pairs of
entangled particles to be leveraged as a quantum resource: enabling it to be used
for practical applications at long last.

Quantum entanglement can be established over very large distances, enabling the
possibility of quantum information being communicated over large distances.
Quantum repeaters and quantum networks are now both capable of performing
precisely that task. Additionally, controlled entanglement is now possible between
not just two particles, but many, such as in numerous condensed matter and
multi-particle systems: again agreeing with quantum mechanics’ predictions and
disagreeing with hidden variable theories. And finally, secure quantum
cryptography, specifically, is enabled by a Bell-inequality-violating test: again
demonstrated by Zeilinger himself.

Three cheers for 2022’s Nobel Laureates in physics, John Clauser, Alain Aspect,
and Anton Zeilinger! Because of them, quantum entanglement is no longer simply
a theoretical curiosity, but a powerful tool being put to use on the cutting-edge of
today’s technology.

In this article

particle physics
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