In 1997 he shared the Nobel Prize for physics for his work on cooling and trapping atoms using laser light.

BBC: Profile: Steven Chu

"We've opened a whole new class of laser materials, " says Robert Byer, a professor in the applied physics department at Stanford.

FORBES: Page 2 of 2

Dr Cirac and Dr Romero-Isart therefore propose putting the virus inside a microscopic cavity and cooling it down to its state of lowest energy (ground state, in physics parlance) using a piece of apparatus known as a laser trap.

ECONOMIST: An old thought experiment may soon be realised