1980–1999[edit]
1980 to 1982 – Alain Aspect verifies experimentally the quantum entanglement hypothesis; his Bell test experiments provide strong evidence that a quantum event at one location can affect an event at another location without any obvious mechanism for communication between the two locations.[60][61]
1982 to 1997 – Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor (TFTR) at PPPL, Princeton, USA: Operated since 1982, produces 10.7MW of controlled fusion power for only 0.21s in 1994 by using T-D nuclear fusion in a tokamak reactor with "a toroidal 6T magnetic field for plasma confinement, a 3MA plasma current and an electron density of 1.0×1020 m−3 of 13.5 keV" [62]
1983 – Carlo Rubbia and Simon van der Meer, at the Super Proton Synchrotron, see unambiguous signals of W particles in January. The actual experiments are called UA1 (led by Rubbia) and UA2 (led by Peter Jenni), and are the collaborative effort of many people. Simon van der Meer is the driving force on the use of the accelerator. UA1 and UA2 find the Z particle a few months later, in May 1983.
1983 to 2011 – The largest and most powerful experimental nuclear fusion tokamak reactor in the world, Joint European Torus (JET) begins operation at Culham Facility in UK; operates with T-D plasma pulses and has a reported gain factor Q of 0.7 in 2009, with an input of 40MW for plasma heating, and a 2800-ton iron magnet for confinement;[63] in 1997 in a tritium-deuterium experiment JET produces 16 MW of fusion power, a total of 22 MJ of fusion, energy and a steady fusion power of 4 MW which is maintained for 4 seconds.[64]
1985 to 2010 – The JT-60 (Japan Torus) begins operation in 1985 with an experimental D-D nuclear fusion tokamak similar to the JET; in 2010 JT-60 holds the record for the highest value of the fusion triple product achieved: 1.77×1028 K·s·m−3 = 1.53×1021 keV·s·m−3.;[65] JT-60 claims it would have an equivalent energy gain factor, Q of 1.25 if it were operated with a T-D plasma instead of the D-D plasma, and on May 9, 2006 attains a fusion hold time of 28.6 s in full operation; moreover, a high-power microwave gyrotron construction is completed that is capable of 1.5MW output for 1s,[66] thus meeting the conditions for the planned ITER, large-scale nuclear fusion reactor. JT-60 is disassembled in 2010 to be upgraded to a more powerful nuclear fusion reactor—the JT-60SA—by using niobium-titanium superconducting coils for the magnet confining the ultra-hot D-D plasma.
1986 – Johannes Georg Bednorz and Karl Alexander Müller produce unambiguous experimental proof of high temperature superconductivity involving Jahn-Teller polarons in orthorhombic La2CuO4, YBCO and other perovskite-type oxides; promptly receive a Nobel prize in 1987 and deliver their Nobel lecture on December 8, 1987.[67]
1986 – Vladimir Gershonovich Drinfeld introduces the concept of quantum groups as Hopf algebras in his seminal address on quantum theory at the International Congress of Mathematicians, and also connects them to the study of the Yang–Baxter equation, which is a necessary condition for the solvability of statistical mechanics models; he also generalizes Hopf algebras to quasi-Hopf algebras, and introduces the study of Drinfeld twists, which can be used to factorize the R-matrix corresponding to the solution of the Yang–Baxter equation associated with a quasitriangular Hopf algebra.
1988 to 1998 – Mihai Gavrilă discovers in 1988 the new quantum phenomenon of atomic dichotomy in hydrogen and subsequently publishes a book on the atomic structure and decay in high-frequency fields of hydrogen atoms placed in ultra-intense laser fields.[68][69][70][71][72][73][74]
1991 – Richard R. Ernst develops two-dimensional nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (2D-FT NMRS) for small molecules in solution and is awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1991 "for his contributions to the development of the methodology of high resolution nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy."[75]
1977 to 1995 – The top quark is finally observed by a team at Fermilab after an 18-year search. It has a mass much greater than had been previously expected — almost as great as a gold atom.
1995 – Eric Cornell, Carl Wieman and Wolfgang Ketterle and co-workers at JILA create the first "pure" Bose–Einstein condensate. They do this by cooling a dilute vapor consisting of approximately two thousand rubidium-87 atoms to below 170 nK using a combination of laser cooling and magnetic evaporative cooling. About four months later, an independent effort led by Wolfgang Ketterle at MIT creates a condensate made of sodium-23. Ketterle's condensate has about a hundred times more atoms, allowing him to obtain several important results such as the observation of quantum mechanical interference between two different condensates.
1998 – The Super-Kamiokande (Japan) detector facility reports experimental evidence for neutrino oscillations, implying that at least one neutrino has mass.
1999 to 2013 – NSTX—The National Spherical Torus Experiment at PPPL, Princeton, USA launches a nuclear fusion project on February 12, 1999 for "an innovative magnetic fusion device that was constructed by the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) in collaboration with the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Columbia University, and the University of Washington at Seattle"; NSTX is being used to study the physics principles of spherically shaped plasmas.[76]
21st century[edit]
2000 – scientists at European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) publish experimental results in which they claim to have observed indirect evidence of the existence of a quark–gluon plasma, which they call a "new state of matter."
2001 – the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory (Canada) confirm the existence of neutrino oscillations. Lene Hau stops a beam of light completely in a Bose–Einstein condensate.[77]
2002 – Leonid Vainerman organizes a meeting at Strasbourg of theoretical physicists and mathematicians focused on quantum group and quantum groupoid applications in quantum theories; the proceedings of the meeting are published in 2003 in a book edited by the meeting organizer.[78]
2003 – Sir Anthony James Leggett receives the 2003 Nobel Prize in Physics for pioneering contributions to the quantum theory of superconductors, and superfluids such as Helium-3, shared with V. L. Ginzburg and A. A. Abrikosov.
2005 – the RHIC accelerator of Brookhaven National Laboratory generates a quark-gluon fluid, perhaps the quark–gluon plasma
2007 to 2010 – Charles Pence Slichter is awarded the National Medal of Science in 2007 for his studies of Nuclear Magnetic Resonance in Solids, and especially his NMR Studies of High-Temperature Superconductors.
2007 to 2010 – Alain Aspect, Anton Zeilinger and John Clauser present progress with the resolution of the non-locality aspect of quantum theory and in 2010 are awarded the Wolf Prize in Physics, together with Anton Zeilinger and John Clauser.[79]
2009 - Aaron D. O'Connell invents the first quantum machine, applying quantum mechanics to a macroscopic object just large enough to be seen by the naked eye, which is able to vibrate a small amount and large amount simultaneously.
2011 - Zachary Dutton demonstrates how photons can co-exist in superconductors. "Direct Observation of Coherent Population Trapping in a Superconducting Artificial Atom",[80]
2014 – Scientists transfer data by quantum teleportation over a distance of 10 feet with zero percent error rate, a vital step towards a quantum internet.[81][82]
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