Previous Winners (1996–2017)
Among its most prestigious prizes, the Quantum Electronics and Optics division (QEOD) of the European Physical Society (EPS) distributes the Quantum Electronics and Optics Prizes. These are the two senior EPS/QEOD prizes (one for fundamental, one for applied aspects) awarded for outstanding contributions to quantum electronics and optics. The prizes winners are each to receive a medal and 5000 euros.
Awarded every two years, these prizes recognize the highest level of achievements in fundamental and applied research in optical physics. The awards are presented in a special Plenary Ceremony generally held on Tuesday morning, during the Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics Europe (CLEO®/Europe) and the EuropeanQuantum Electronics Conference (EQEC), held in Munich, Germany taking place in uneven years.
2017 EPS Quantum Electronics Prizes
Applied aspects
The 2017 EPS-QEOD Quantum Electronics and Optics Prize for applied aspects is awarded to Prof. Victor Malka, CNRS research director at the Laboratoire d’Optique Appliquée, Palaiseau, France and Professor at the Weizmann Institute for Science, Rehovot, Israel, for pioneering research using ultra-high intensity lasers
for laser-plasma accelerators and their applications.
Fundamental aspects
The 2017 EPS-QEOD Quantum Electronics and Optics Prize for fundamental aspects is awarded to Niek F. van Hulst, CREA research professor at ICFO, The Institute of Photonic Sciences, Barcelona, Spain, for pioneering contributions to nano-optics and its applications to molecular spectroscopy and to ultrafast light-matter interactions.
2015 EPS Quantum Electronics Prizes
Applied aspects
The 2015 EPS-QEOD Quantum Electronics and Optics Prize for applied aspects is awarded to Braham Javidi, University of Connecticut, Mansfield, USA for pioneering contributions to
information optics, including 3D imaging, 3D displays,
and 3D imaging of photon starved scenes.
Fundamental aspects
The 2015 EPS-QEOD Quantum Electronics and Optics Prize for fundamental aspects is awarded to Sir John Pendry, Imperial College London, UK, for helping formulate rules on how to incorporate different kinds of materials with nanoscale structures to form larger scale metamaterials with exciting new optical properties not seen in nature.
2013 EPS Quantum Electronics Prizes
Applied aspects
The 2013 Prize for applied aspects of quantum electronics and optics is awarded to Federico Capasso, Harvard University, Cambridge, USA), or seminal contribution to the invention and demonstration the quantum cascade laser..
Fundamental aspects
The 2013 EPS-QEOD Quantum Electronics Prize for fundamental aspects is awarded to Maciej Lewenstein, professor at ICFO, the Institute of Photonic Sciences, Castelldefels, Spain, for outstanding contribution to several areas of theoretical quantum optics and to the use of quantum information and to attosecond optics
2011 EPS Quantum Electronics Prizes
Applied aspects
The 2011 Prize for applied aspects of quantum electronics and optics is awarded to Ursula Keller, ETH Zurich, for her
seminal contributions to ultrafast solid-state
lasers, telecommunications, metrology, and
attosecond science.
.
Fundamental aspects
The 2011 Prize for fundamental aspects of quantum electronics and optics is awarded to Immanuel Bloch, Max-Planck Institute of Quantum Optics, Garching, Germany, for his pioneering work on exploring quantum many-body systems using ultracold quantum gases for quantum simulation and quantum information applications.
2009 EPS Quantum Electronics Prizes
Applied aspects
The 2009 Prize for applied aspects of quantum electronics and optics is awarded to Thomas Ebbesen, USIAS, Strasbourg, France, for his work carried out since the early 1990s into the novel optical properties of nanostructured metals and in particular for his discovery of how light can be efficently transmitted through subwavelength holes.
Fundamental aspects
The 2009 Prize for fundamental aspects of quantum electronics and optics is awarded to Alain Aspect, Institut d'Optique Graduate School-Université Paris-Saclay, France, for his seminal experiments confirming the non-classical nature of quantum entanglement, which paved the way for quantum information science, and for pioneering contributions to quantum and atom optics, including his influential collaboration on laser cooling with Nobel laureate Claude Cohen-Tannoudji.
2007 EPS Quantum Electronics Prizes
Applied aspects
The 2007 Prize for applied aspects of quantum electronics and optics is awarded to Mordechai Segev, Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel, for his pioneering contributions in the field of light propagation in nonlinear media, in particular regarding spatial solitons in photorefractive materials, incoherent solitons, and nonlinear waves in periodic structures.
Fundamental aspects
The 2007 Prize for fundamental aspects of quantum electronics and optics is awarded to Anton Zelinger, University of Vienna, Austia, for his many seminal contributions to the
foundations of quantum optics and quantum information
science.
2005 EPS Quantum Electronics Prizes
Applied aspects
The 2005 Prize for applied aspects of quantum electronics and optics is awarded to Gerd Leuchs, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light, Erlangen, Germany for the efficient generation of optical pulses for quantum communication by fiber optics techniques at telecommunications wavelengths and very high bit rates and unprecedented quantum noise reduction and entanglement.
Fundamental aspects
The 2005 Prize for fundamental aspects of quantum electronics and optics is awarded to Ignacio Cirac, Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics, Garching, Germany for groundbreaking theoretical work on quantum information processing and on quantum gases; including pioneering proposals for quantum computation, quantum repeaters, quantum simulations, and quantum phase transitions in ultra-cold atoms
2003 EPS Quantum Electronics Prizes
Applied aspects
The 2003 Prize for applied aspects of quantum electronics and optics is awarded to Günter Huber, Institute for Quantum Physics, University of Hamburg, Germany, for his outstanding and numerous contributions to physics of solid-state lasers and spectroscopy of laser crystals.
Fundamental aspects
The 2003 Prize for fundamental aspects of quantum electronics and optics is awarded to Luigi Lugiato, Università dell'Insubria, Como, Italy, for pioneering theoretical contributions to the fields of optical bistability and instabilities, optical pattern formation and cavity solitons, squeezing and quantum imaging.
2002 EPS Quantum Electronics Prizes
Applied aspects
The 2002 Prize for applied aspects of quantum electronics and optics is awarded to Wilson Sibbett, St. Andrews UK, for his major contributions to the development and application of ultrashort light pulse techniques, and in particular to the development of self-mode-locked lasers.
Fundamental aspects
The 2002 Prize for fundamental aspects of quantum electronics and optics is awarded to Serge Haroche, Ecole Normale Supérieure and Collège de France, Paris, France, for his pioneering investigations in Cavity Quantum Electrodynamics. Quantum Information and Decoherence.
2001 EPS Quantum Electronics Prizes
Applied aspects
The 2001 Prize for applied aspects of quantum electronics and optics is awarded to Algis Petras Piskarskas, Vilnius University, Dept. of Physics, Lithuania, for his his pioneering research and development of ultrashort pulsed light sources based on optical parametric generation and oscillation.
Fundamental aspects
The 2001 Prize for fundamental aspects of quantum electronics and optics is awarded to Theodor W. Hänsch, Max-Planck-Institut, für Quantenoptik, Garching, Germany, for his innovative contributions to laser spectroscopy, in particular regarding precision spectroscopy of hydrogen.
2000 EPS Quantum Electronics Prizes
Applied aspects
The 2000 Prize for applied aspects of quantum electronics and optics is awarded to David Hanna, Optoelectronics Research Centre, University of Southampton, UK, for his outstanding and numerous contributions to solid state laser physics and non-linear optics.
Fundamental aspects
The 2000 Prize for fundamental aspects of quantum electronics and optics is awarded to Herbert Walther, Max-Planck-Institut für Quantenoptik, University of Munich, Germany, for the creation of the micromaser and the realisation of ionic crystals in traps.
1998 EPS Quantum Electronics Prizes
Applied aspects
Fundamental aspects
The 1998 Prize for fundamental aspects of quantum electronics and optics is awarded to Vladilen Letokhov, MIPT, Moscow, Russia, for pioneering and far-reaching contributions to the study of laser/matter interactions including atom optics, laser cooling, laser induced chemistry and laser analytical techniques
1996 EPS Quantum Electronics Prizes
Applied aspects
Fundamental aspects
The 1996 Prize for fundamental aspects of quantum electronics and optics is awarded to Claude Cohen-Tannoudji, École normale supérieure à Paris, Collège de France, for developing the dressed-atom approach in quantum optics and for fundamental contributions to the understanding of radiative forces with ground-breaking experiments in laser cooling and trapping of atoms.