• Three scientists won the Nobel Prize in Physics 2023 for studying how electrons zip around the atom in the tiniest fractions of seconds, a field that could one day lead to better electronics or disease diagnoses.

• The award went to French-Swedish physicist Anne L’Huillier, French scientist Pierre Agostini and Hungarian-born Ferenc Krausz for experimental methods that generate attosecond pulses of light for the study of electron dynamics in matter.

• Only the fifth woman to win a Nobel physics prize, French-born L’Huillier works at Lund University in Sweden, while Agostini, who was also born in France, is an emeritus professor at Ohio State University in the United States. Krausz is director at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics in Garching, Germany.

• Through their experiments, they have created flashes of light that are short enough to take snapshots of electrons’ extremely rapid movements.

• The three scientists were recognised for their experiments, which have given humanity new tools for exploring the world of electrons inside atoms and molecules. 

Providing images of processes inside atoms

• Pierre Agostini, Ferenc Krausz and Anne L’Huillier have demonstrated a way to create extremely short pulses of light that can be used to measure the rapid processes in which electrons move or change energy.

• Fast-moving events flow into each other when perceived by humans, just like a film that consists of still images is perceived as continual movement. If we want to investigate really brief events, we need special technology. In the world of electrons, changes occur in a few tenths of an attosecond. 

• An attosecond is so short that there are as many in one second as there have been seconds since the birth of the universe.

• The laureates’ experiments have produced pulses of light so short that they are measured in attoseconds, thus demonstrating that these pulses can be used to provide images of processes inside atoms and molecules.

• In 1987, Anne L’Huillier discovered that many different overtones of light arose when she transmitted infrared laser light through a noble gas. Each overtone is a light wave with a given number of cycles for each cycle in the laser light. 

• They are caused by the laser light interacting with atoms in the gas. It gives some electrons extra energy that is then emitted as light. Anne L’Huillier has continued to explore this phenomenon, laying the ground for subsequent breakthroughs.

• In 2001, Pierre Agostini succeeded in producing and investigating a series of consecutive light pulses, in which each pulse lasted just 250 attoseconds. 

• At the same time, Ferenc Krausz was working with another type of experiment, one that made it possible to isolate a single light pulse that lasted 650 attoseconds.

• The laureates’ contributions have enabled the investigation of processes that are so rapid they were previously impossible to follow.

Applications in different areas

• Attosecond physics gives the opportunity to understand mechanisms that are governed by electrons.

• There are potential applications in many different areas. In electronics, for example, it is important to understand and control how electrons behave in a material. Attosecond pulses can also be used to identify different molecules, such as in medical diagnostics.

• The field also holds promise in areas such as a new in-vitro diagnostic technique to detect characteristic molecular traces of diseases in blood samples.

Manorama Yearbook app is now available on Google Play Store and iOS App Store