The John Stewart Bell Prize for Research on Fundamental Issues in Quantum Mechanics and their Applications (short form: Bell Prize) was established in 2009, funded and managed by the

University of Toronto The University of Toronto (UToronto or U of T) is a public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, located on the grounds that surround Queen's Park. It was founded by royal charter in 1827 as King's College, the first institution ...

, Centre for Quantum Information & Quantum Control (CQIQC). Named after the Nobel Prize winner,

John Stewart Bell John Stewart Bell FRS (28 July 1928 – 1 October 1990) was a physicist from Northern Ireland and the originator of Bell's theorem, an important theorem in quantum physics regarding hidden-variable theories. In 2022, the Nobel Prize in Phy ...

, it is awarded every odd-numbered year, for significant contributions relating to the foundations of

quantum mechanics Quantum mechanics is a fundamental theory in physics that provides a description of the physical properties of nature at the scale of atoms and subatomic particles. It is the foundation of all quantum physics including quantum chemistry, ...

and to the applications of these principles – this covers, but is not limited to,

quantum information theory Quantum information is the information of the quantum state, state of a quantum system. It is the basic entity of study in quantum information theory, and can be manipulated using quantum information processing techniques. Quantum information re ...

quantum computation Quantum computing is a type of computation whose operations can harness the phenomena of quantum mechanics, such as superposition, interference, and entanglement. Devices that perform quantum computations are known as quantum computers. Though ...

, quantum foundations,

quantum cryptography Quantum cryptography is the science of exploiting quantum mechanical properties to perform cryptographic tasks. The best known example of quantum cryptography is quantum key distribution which offers an information-theoretically secure solution ...

and

quantum control Coherent control is a quantum mechanics-based method for controlling dynamic processes by light. The basic principle is to control quantum interference phenomena, typically by shaping the phase of laser pulses. The basic ideas have proliferated, f ...

. The selection committee has included

Gilles Brassard Gilles Brassard, is a faculty member of the Université de Montréal, where he has been a Full Professor since 1988 and Canada Research Chair since 2001. Education and early life Brassard received a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Cornell Unive ...

Peter Zoller Peter may refer to: People * List of people named Peter, a list of people and fictional characters with the given name * Peter (given name) ** Saint Peter (died 60s), apostle of Jesus, leader of the early Christian Church * Peter (surname), a su ...

Alain Aspect Alain Aspect (; born 15 June 1947) is a French physicist noted for his experimental work on quantum entanglement. Aspect was awarded the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics, jointly with John Clauser and Anton Zeilinger, "for experiments with entangl ...

John Preskill John Phillip Preskill (born January 19, 1953) is an American theoretical physicist and the Richard P. Feynman Professor of Theoretical Physics at the California Institute of Technology The California Institute of Technology (branded as Caltech ...

, and

Juan Ignacio Cirac Sasturain Juan Ignacio Cirac Sasturain (born 11 October 1965), known professionally as Ignacio Cirac, is a Spanish physicist. He is one of the pioneers of the field of quantum computing and quantum information theory. He is the recipient of the 2006 Pri ...

, in addition to previous winners

Sandu Popescu Sandu Popescu (born 1956 in Oradea, Romania) is a Romanian-British physicist working in the Quantum foundations, foundations of quantum mechanics and quantum information. Career and research Popescu has been Professor of Physics at the Univer ...

Michel Devoret Michel Devoret is a French physicist and F. W. Beinecke Professor of Applied Physics at Yale University. He also holds a position as the Director of the Applied Physics Nanofabrication Lab at Yale. He is known for his pioneering work on macroscopi ...

and

Nicolas Gisin Nicolas Gisin (born 1952) is a Swiss physicist and professor at the University of Geneva working on the foundations of quantum mechanics, and quantum information and communication. His work includes both experimental and theoretical physics. He ...

Awarded Prizes

Source: * 2009: Prof.

for his theoretical and experimental work on

quantum nonlocality In theoretical physics, quantum nonlocality refers to the phenomenon by which the measurement statistics of a multipartite quantum system do not admit an interpretation in terms of a local realistic theory. Quantum nonlocality has been experimen ...

, quantum cryptography and quantum teleportation. * 2011:

, Professor of Physics at the

University of Bristol , mottoeng = earningpromotes one's innate power (from Horace, ''Ode 4.4'') , established = 1595 – Merchant Venturers School1876 – University College, Bristol1909 – received royal charter , type ...

, UK, for discoveries of stronger-than-quantum no-signaling correlations, and the application of quantum theory to

thermodynamics Thermodynamics is a branch of physics that deals with heat, work, and temperature, and their relation to energy, entropy, and the physical properties of matter and radiation. The behavior of these quantities is governed by the four laws of the ...

. * 2013:

and

Robert J. Schoelkopf Robert J. Schoelkopf III (born January 24, 1964) is an American physicist, most noted for his work on quantum computing as one of the inventors of superconducting qubits. Schoelkopf's main research areas are quantum transport, single-electron d ...

, Professors of Applied Physics at

Yale University Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wo ...

, USA, for their work on entangling

superconducting Superconductivity is a set of physical properties observed in certain materials where electrical resistance vanishes and magnetic flux fields are expelled from the material. Any material exhibiting these properties is a superconductor. Unlike ...

qubits In quantum computing, a qubit () or quantum bit is a basic unit of quantum information—the quantum version of the classic binary bit physically realized with a two-state device. A qubit is a two-state (or two-level) quantum-mechanical system, ...

and microwave photons, and their application to quantum information processing. * 2015:

Rainer Blatt Rainer Blatt (born 8 September 1952) is a German-Austrian experimental physicist. His research centres on the areas of quantum optics and quantum information. He and his team performed one of the first experiments to teleport atoms, the other wa ...

, Professor of Experimental Physics at

University of Innsbruck The University of Innsbruck (german: Leopold-Franzens-Universität Innsbruck; la, Universitas Leopoldino Franciscea) is a public research university in Innsbruck, the capital of the Austrian federal state of Tyrol, founded on October 15, 1669. ...

, and director of Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information Innsbruck, Austria, for his works on quantum information processing with trapped ions. * 2017: Ronald Hanson (

Delft University of Technology Delft University of Technology ( nl, Technische Universiteit Delft), also known as TU Delft, is the oldest and largest Dutch public technical university, located in Delft, Netherlands. As of 2022 it is ranked by QS World University Rankings among ...

), Sae Woo Nam (

National Institute of Standards and Technology The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is an agency of the United States Department of Commerce whose mission is to promote American innovation and industrial competitiveness. NIST's activities are organized into physical sci ...

), and

Anton Zeilinger Anton Zeilinger (; born 20 May 1945) is an Austrian quantum physicist and Nobel laureate in physics of 2022. Zeilinger is professor of physics emeritus at the University of Vienna and senior scientist at the Institute for Quantum Optics and ...

(

University of Vienna The University of Vienna (german: Universität Wien) is a public research university located in Vienna, Austria. It was founded by Duke Rudolph IV in 1365 and is the oldest university in the German-speaking world. With its long and rich histor ...

) for "their groups’ experiments simultaneously closing the detection and locality loopholes in a violation of Bell’s Inequalities". * 2019: Juan Ignacio Cirac (

Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics The Max-Planck-Institute of Quantum Optics (abbreviation: MPQ; german: Max-Planck-Institut für Quantenoptik) is a part of the Max Planck Society which operates 87 research facilities in Germany. The institute is located in Garching, Germany, ...

) and

(

and IQOQI) for "their recent groundbreaking proposals in quantum optics and atomic physics on how to engineer quantum systems to carry out novel information processing tasks, in particular for extending the applications of quantum simulators to lattice gauge theories, showing how long range entanglement can be estimated via statistical measurements, and using Projected Entangled Pair States for the theoretical study of quantum many body systems". * 2021: John M. Martinis (

University of California, Santa Barbara The University of California, Santa Barbara (UC Santa Barbara or UCSB) is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Santa Barbara County, California, Santa Barbara, California with 23,196 undergraduate ...

). (Official ceremony: 1 June 2021)

References

{{Reflist Physics awards Quantum mechanics University of Toronto

Awarded Prizes

See also

References