PARIS, Oct. 6, 2022 — Alain Aspect, professor at the Université Paris-Saclay and École Polytechnique in Palaiseau, France, and co-founder of PASQAL, has received the Nobel Prize in Physics 2022.

PASQAL wants to congratulate all Nobel Prize winners for their outstanding contributions to the study of quantum physics. Professor Alain Aspect’s experiment established unambiguously entanglement between two individual photons by violating Bell inequalities. Entanglement is a fundamental property of quantum objects, for which each subpart is strongly correlated to the other parts even when they are separated by a distance such that they cannot interact. This concept is at the heart of the second quantum revolution.

“Congratulations to all Nobel Prize winners, and especially I would like to congratulate and thank Alain Aspect,” said PASQAL CEO Georges-Olivier Reymond. “I am immensely delighted for him! Beyond his discoveries and his vast contribution to Quantum Physics, he also inspired and will continue to inspire, young physicists, as he has been for me. We are deeply honored to have him in PASQAL, as a co-founder.”

Professor Alain Aspect is also known for his work with cold atoms that he started after joining Collège de France. There he developed an innovative method to cool down atoms to immobilize and manipulate them with lasers.

This method is fundamental for neutral atoms quantum computing. In 1992, he set up his research group at the Orsay Institut d’Optique  and embarked on a worldwide race to create a new state of matter, a Bose-Einstein condensate.

His student, Professor Philippe Grangier kept up with his innovative mindset by developing and pioneering with Georges-Olivier Reymond, the optical tweezers for single atoms.

Professor Alain Aspect co-founded PASQAL in 2019 with Georges-Olivier Reymond, Antoine Browaeys, Thierry Lahaye, and Christophe Jurczak.

“Almost forty years ago, I performed experiments showing that entanglement is a reality in spite of Einstein’s doubts,” said Aspect. “It belonged to the conceptual step of the second quantum revolution. In the recent years, I have been delighted to learn of ideas to use entanglement for solving some problems exponentially faster than with classical computers. This is the so-called Quantum Advantage. With PASQAL, I am glad to be in the game of the technological stage of the second quantum revolution, as I was a player in its conceptual stage.”

It is a privilege for PASQAL to have Professor Alain Aspect as a team member. His work with entangled photons laid the ground for the recent developments in quantum physics and the progression of quantum computing. His experience and knowhows are invaluable to PASQAL to fulfill its mission and to bring industries into the quantum age through the power of neutral atoms quantum computing.

Quantum computing aims to overcome the limitations of classical computing and bring unprecedented processing power to solve real-world problems that could not be addressed before. PASQAL is the first quantum computing company that has a co-founder awarded a Nobel Prize. Traditionally, the Nobel Prize is awarded to the discoveries that have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind, in this case, a fundamental concept that allowed the development of quantum computers.

About PASQAL

PASQAL builds quantum computers from ordered neutral atoms in 2D and 3D arrays to bring a practical quantum advantage to its customers in addressing real-world problems, especially in quantum simulation and optimization. PASQAL was founded in 2019 by Georges-Olivier Reymond, Christophe Jurczak, Professor Dr. Alain Aspect, Dr. Antoine Browaeys, and Dr. Thierry Lahaye. Based in Palaiseau and Massy, south of Paris, PASQAL has secured more than €40 million in financing, combining equity and non-dilutive funding from Quantonation, the Defense Innovation Fund, Runa Capital, BPI France, ENI, and Daphni.

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Source: PASQAL