Three brilliant minds have been honored with the Nobel Prize in Physics for the year 2023, recognizing their groundbreaking experiments that have provided humanity with revolutionary tools to delve into the enigmatic world of electrons residing within atoms and molecules.
Pierre Agostini, Ferenc Krausz, and Anne L’Huillier have demonstrated an innovative method to create extraordinarily short pulses of light, unlocking the potential to measure the swift processes during which electrons change energy or traverse within nanoseconds.
To the human eye, fast-moving events seem to seamlessly merge, much like frames in a film producing an illusion of continuous motion. However, to study events of extremely brief durations, specialized technology is imperative. Within the realm of electrons, transformations transpire within a few tenths of an attosecond – a unit of time so minuscule that there are as many attoseconds in one second as there have been seconds since the inception of the universe.
The experiments conducted by these laureates have yielded light pulses of astonishing brevity, measured in attoseconds. This groundbreaking feat underscores the potential of using such pulses to capture images of intricate processes transpiring within atoms and molecules.
Anne L’Huillier’s journey began in 1987 when she observed a plethora of light overtones while transmitting infrared laser light through a noble gas. Each overtone represents a light wave with a specific number of cycles for every cycle in the laser light. These overtones manifest due to the interaction of laser light with atoms in the gas, imparting additional energy to certain electrons, subsequently emitted as light. L’Huillier’s persistent exploration of this phenomenon laid the foundation for subsequent breakthroughs.
In 2001, Pierre Agostini achieved a significant milestone by generating and investigating a series of successive light pulses, each lasting a mere 250 attoseconds. Concurrently, Ferenc Krausz pursued a different experiment, enabling the isolation of a single light pulse spanning 650 attoseconds.
The contributions of these laureates have paved the way for the study of processes that were hitherto too rapid to be comprehensively tracked.
“We can now unlock the mysteries of the electron world. Attosecond physics grants us the ability to comprehend mechanisms controlled by electrons. The next step is harnessing this knowledge,” asserts Eva Olsson, Chair of the Nobel Committee for Physics.
These breakthroughs promise a myriad of potential applications across diverse domains. In electronics, understanding and controlling the behavior of electrons in a material is critical. Attosecond pulses also hold the potential for identifying distinct molecules, an invaluable asset in fields like medical diagnostics.
With this year’s Nobel Prize in Physics, the laureates have not only advanced the boundaries of human knowledge but have also opened up new vistas of exploration, promising a brighter and more insightful future in the realm of physics and its applications.
