Serge Haroche is a French physicist who was awarded the 2012 Nobel Prize for
Physics jointly with David J. Wineland for "ground-breaking experimental
methods that enable measuring and manipulation of individual quantum
systems", a study of the particle of light, the photon. This and his other
works developed laser spectroscopy. Since 2001, Haroche is a Professor at
the Collège de France and holds the Chair of Quantum Physics. In 1971 he
defended his doctoral thesis in physics at the University of Paris VI, his
research has been conducted under the direction of Claude Cohen-Tannoudji.
Personal life and family Serge Haroche was born in Casablanca,
Morocco, to Albert Haroche and Valentine Haroche, née Roubleva a teacher who was
born in Odessa to Jewish family that relocated to Paris in the early 1920s.
His father, a lawyer, comes from a family originally from Marrakech, who
settled in Casablanca to work as teachers at the École de l’Alliance
israélite. Haroche left Morocco and settled in
France in 1956, at the end of the French protectorate treaty.
He currently lives in Paris; he is married to the sociologist Claudine
Haroche, also descending from the Russian Jewish émigrés family, with two
children. He is the uncle of French singer–songwriter and actor Raphaël
Haroche. Career
Haroche worked in the Centre national de la recherche scientifique as a research
scientist from 1967 to 1975, and spent a year as a visiting post-doc in Stanford
University, in Arthur Leonard Schawlow's team. In 1975 he moved to a professor
position at Paris VI University. At the same time he taught in other
institutions, in particular at the École polytechnique, Harvard University, Yale
University and Conservatoire national des arts et métiers. He was head of the
Physics department at the École normale supérieure from 1994 to 2000.
Since 2001, Haroche has been a Professor at the Collège de France and holds the
Chair of Quantum Physics. He is a member of the Société Française de Physique,
the European Physical society and a fellow and member of the American
Physical Society. In September 2012, Serge Haroche was
elected by his peers to the position of administrator of the Collège de France.
On October 9, 2012, Haroche was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics, together
with the American physicist David Wineland, for their work regarding
measurement and manipulation of individual quantum systems.
Research Haroche works primarily in atomic
physics and quantum optics. He is principally known for proving quantum
decoherence by experimental observation, while working with colleagues at the
École normale supérieure in Paris in 1996.
After a PhD dissertation on dressed atoms under the supervision of Claude
Cohen-Tannoudji from 1967 to 1971, he developed new methods for laser
spectroscopy in the seventies, based on the study of quantum beats and
superradiance. He then moved on to Rydberg atoms, giant atomic states
particularly sensitive to microwaves, which makes them well adapted for
studying the interactions between light and matter. He showed that such atoms,
coupled to a superconducting cavity containing a few photons, are
well-suited to the testing of quantum decoherence and to the realization of
quantum logic operations necessary for the treatment of quantum information.
Awards Commander of the French Legion of Honour
1988 Einstein Prize for Laser Science. 1992 The Humboldt Prize
1993 Albert A. Michelson Medal by the Franklin Institute
2007 Charles Hard Townes Award by the OSA
2009 CNRS Gold medal 2012 Nobel Prize in Physics
Bibliography Serge Haroche, Jean-Michel Raimond,
Exploring the quantum. Atoms, cavities and photons, Oxford University Press,
2006. References