The second quantum revolution is based on entanglement, discovered by Einstein and Schrödinger in 1935. Its extraordinary character has been experimentally demonstrated by landmark experiments in quantum optics.
At Institut d’Optique, we are currently revisiting these landmarks using atoms instead of photons, and after the observation of the atomic HOM effect1, we are progressing towards a test of Bell’s inequalities with pairs of momentum entangled atoms2.
1. Lopes, R., Imanaliev, A., Aspect, A., Cheneau, M., Boiron, D., & Westbrook, C. I. (2015). Atomic Hong-Ou-Mandel experiment. Nature, 520(7545), 66-68.
2. Pierre Dussarrat, Maxime Perrier, Almazbek Imanaliev, Raphael Lopes, Alain Aspect, Marc Cheneau, Denis Boiron, and Christoph I. Westbrook: A two-particle, four-mode interferometer for atoms, arXiv 1707. 01279, to appear in Phys. Rev. Lett.