Two Americans and a German have won this year's Nobel Prize for Physics for their work in the field of optics, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm announced this morning.
Roy Glauber of Harvard University takes half the €1.07 million prize for his theoretical description of the behaviour of light particles.
In its citation, the academy said he established in 1963 the basis of quantum optics in which quantum theory encompasses the field of optics.
John Hall of the University of Colorado and Theodor Haensch from the Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich claimed the other half of the prize for their work on determining the colour of the light in atoms and molecules with extreme precision.
Their findings are said to have made it possible to measure frequencies with an accuracy of 15 digits for use in highly accurate clocks and new technology for global positioning systems.
