Haroche, Serge

Haroche, Serge,

1944–, French physicist, Ph.D. Paris VI Univ., 1971. He was a professor at Pierre and Marie Curie Univ. from 1975 to 2001 and at Paris VI Univ. from 1982 to 2001, when he joined the faculty at the Collège de France. Haroche shared the 2012 Nobel Prize in Physics with David WinelandWineland, David Jeffrey,
1944–, American physicist, b. Milwaukee, Wis., Ph.D. Harvard, 1970. Wineland has been a researcher at the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the Univ. of Colorado, Boulder, since 1975.
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 for their ground-breaking experimental methods that enable the measuring and manipulation of individual quantum systems. Working independently, Haroche and Wineland found ways to study particles of matter and light without destroying them; Haroche approached the problem through the control and measurement of photonsphoton
, the particle composing light and other forms of electromagnetic radiation, sometimes called light quantum. The photon has no charge and no mass. About the beginning of the 20th cent.
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. The work of Haroche and Wineland could pave the path to creation of quantum computers, which could advance computing power far beyond that offered by present systems.