Glauber, an 80-year-old physics professor at Harvard University, took half the Nobel prize for establishing the basis of quantum optics, which explained the fundamental difference between sources of light such as light bulbs and lasers, it said.

Hall and Haensch shared the other half for advancing the development of laser-based precision spectroscopy, a field that opens the way to the next generation of GPS navigation and ultra-precise atomic clocks.

"Lasers with extremely sharp colours can now be constructed," the Academy said of the work of Hall, 71, and Haensch, 63.

Hall works at the University of Colorado and the National Institute of Standards and Technology while Haensch is a physics professor at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet in Munich, Germany.

Their work made it possible to develop "extremely accurate clocks" and improve satellite-based navigation systems (GPS) for anything from car and boat trips to distant journeys through space, the Academy said.

How light emitted by a candle differs from the beam produced by a laser in a CD player, or how the already stunning accuracy of atomic clocks could be improved, were among questions this year's laureates had tackled successfully, the Academy said.