There is a Nobel Prize in Physics. For experiments on attosecond flashes of light

After the Nobel Prize in Medicine was awarded on Monday, it was time to announce the winners of this prestigious prize in physics. This time, the Nobel Committee honored scientists who performed experiments needed to conduct research on the dynamics of electrons in matter.

There is a Nobel Prize in Physics. Three winners this year

In 2023, the prize was awarded to French-American physicist Pierre Agostini, Hungarian-Austrian scientist Ferenc Krausz and French researcher Anne L’Huilliero for their experiments on attosecond pulses of light in electron research.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physics to Pierre Agostini, Ferenc Krausz and Anne L’Huillier “for their experimental methods generating attosecond pulses of light to study the dynamics of electrons in matter.”

– wrote on the official Nobel Prize account on the X website.

Scientists managed to generate attosecond light pulses, i.e. unimaginably short flashes of light and at the same time the shortest events that can be generated by humans. One attosecond is an incredibly small fraction of a second – just one trillionth of a second (0.000,000,000,000,000,001 seconds). As experts from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences explain, one attosecond is approximately as small a part of one second as one second is a part of the age of the Universe (approx. 13.82 billion years).

The flash of light appearing for such an extremely short time allowed researchers to record the movement of electrons in atoms and molecules, which is so fast that it has to be measured in attoseconds. As Mats Larsson of the Nobel Committee for Physics said, the three prize-winning scientists have worked very hard to open up a path to better explore the extraordinary world of electrons that has remained closed until now.

2023 physics laureates Pierre Agostini, Ferenc Krausz and Anne L’Huillier created flashes of light that are short enough to take images of the extremely fast movements of electrons. L’Huillier discovered a new effect of the interaction of laser light with gas atoms. Agostini and Krausz showed that this effect could be used to produce shorter pulses of light than was previously possible.

Among Poles, the Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded only to Maria Skłodowska-Curie (in 1903). After eight years, the Polish-French scientist was honored again in the field of chemistry.

We are still waiting for the winners of the remaining Nobel Prizes

The Nobel Prize in Medicine was awarded on Monday. Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman were honored for their discoveries regarding mRNA modifications that allowed the development of effective vaccines against COVID-19. The justification explained that the work of this year’s Nobel Prize winners in medicine helped save millions of people.

On Wednesday, the name (or names) of the scientists who won in the field of chemistry will be announced, and on Thursday we will learn the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature. On Friday, the Norwegian Nobel Committee will award the Nobel Peace Prize. The so-called economic Nobel Prize, i.e. the Bank of Sweden Award. The Alfred Nobel Prize in Economics will be awarded next Monday.