ONERA welcomes the award of the Nobel Prize to Alain Aspect, for his experiments with entangled photons, paving the way for the second quantum revolution.
Alain Aspect is someone with close connections to ONERA. He has held various positions here, as chairman of ONERA’s Scientific High Council (2004–2006), member of ONERA’s scientific and technical council (CST, 1998–2002) and member of the assessment and orientation council of the Physical Measurements department (1999–2003, which became the Department of Physics, Instrumentation, Environment and Space in 2017).
Today, he is chairman of the scientific council of the QTech laboratory* (ONERA’s quantum technology laboratory).
In the early 2000s, Alain Aspect encouraged in particular the development of research into cold atoms at ONERA, giving rise to the GIRAFE gravimeter, the first quantum sensor for making absolute measurements of the field of gravity with very high accuracy from a ship or an aircraft. The first laser subsystem of the devices developed by ONERA in this context were able, in particular, to be tested in collaboration with Alain Aspect's team at the Optical Institute Graduate School in Palaiseau.
Today we are proud to continue this collaboration by way of our QTech lab, and we congratulate Alain on this well-deserved Nobel Prize!
