Serge Haroche, and David Wineland win Nobel Prize for Physics in 2012

Pictures of the winners of the 2012 Nobel prize in physics, Serge Haroche (France) and David Wineland (US), are projected on a screen at the Royal Swedish Academy of Science in Stockholm. Photograph: Jonathan Nackstrand/AFP/Getty Images

Frenchman Serge Haroche and American David Wineland have won the 2012 Nobel Prize in physics for inventing and developing methods for observing tiny quantum particles without destroying them. 

Professors Haroche and Wineland both work in the field of quantum optics. This is the part of physics concerned with the interaction between light and matter at the quantum level, so between individual particles of light, photons, and matter, such as atoms or ions (which are atoms but with electrons missing). Haroche and Wineland have been able to do experiments which involve manipulating individual particles while maintaining their quantum nature; this is very difficult to achieve because particles tend to interact with the environment and then behave in a classical (non-quantum) manner.

Quantum optics may offer a route to implementing quantum computers, which some researchers believe will bring an advance in computing power far beyond what present systems offer.

Prof Jim Al-Khalili of the University of Surrey: