2023-10-03 13:24:00
The winners of the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physics are Pierre Agostini, Ferenc Krausz and Anne L’Huillier /Credit: Ohio State University; Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics; BBVA Foundation)
A heartbeat lasts only one second and it seems like a very short time. The winners of the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physics have made revolutionary discoveries in the world of electrons and have worked with an even smaller unit of time: the attosecond, which is equivalent to one trillionth of a second.
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The winners, as announced today by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, are Pierre Agostini, who works at Ohio State University in the United States, Ferenc Krausz, from the Max Planck Institute for Quantum Optics, in Germany, and Anne L’ Huillier, born in France, who is a researcher and professor at Lund University, in Sweden.
They started from basic questions, and arrived at results that can now have multiple applications and economic implications.
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In its foundations, the Academy jury considered that the three scientists “have been recognized for their experiments, which have provided humanity with new tools to explore the world of electrons inside atoms and molecules.”
A committee of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences considered that the three winners carried out experiments that provided humanity with new tools to explore the world of electrons inside atoms and molecules (REUTERS/Tom Little)
They showed that “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” was possible.
In dialogue with Infobae, Diego Arbó, a physics researcher at the Institute of Astronomy and Space Physics (IAFE), which depends on the University of Buenos Aires and Conicet, considered that the Nobel winners deserved it. “The generation of attosecond pulses (which is one trillionth of a second) is a very important advance for the physics of ultrafast phenomena, such as the determination of the movements of electrons in atomic transitions,” he said.
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Since the beginning of this century – Arbó recalled – the interaction of electromagnetic radiation (which is pulsed lasers) with matter has been studied on unprecedented scales. Today, unprecedented ultrashort times are being measured: on the order of the attosecond and even below the attosecond.”
Pulsed lasers have many applications, not only for the development of science but also industry, medicine, among other fields. For example, they are used in the widespread refractive surgery that corrects myopia.
Scientist L’Huillier said her work shows how important it is to pursue fundamental science regardless of future applications, as she spent 30 years doing it before potential real-world uses became more evident (News Agency /Ola Torkelsson via REUTERS)
Each of the awardees did their part to reach the great contribution. In 1987, scientist L’Huillier discovered that many different overtones of light emerged when she transmitted infrared laser light through a noble gas.
In physics, each overtone is a light wave with a certain number of cycles for each cycle of laser light. They are due to the interaction of the laser light with the gas atoms, which gives some electrons extra energy that is emitted in the form of light. L’Huillier laid the foundations for the advances that came later.
In 2001, Dr. Agostini – who is French-American – managed to produce and investigate a series of consecutive light pulses. In that experiment, each pulse lasted only 250 attoseconds. At the same time, Krausz – born in Hungary in 1962 – was working on another type of experiment, one that allowed for the isolation of a single pulse of light that lasted 650 attoseconds.
The contributions of the winners have made it possible to investigate processes so fast that they were previously impossible to follow. “Now we can open the door to the world of electrons. Attosecond physics gives us the opportunity to understand mechanisms governed by electrons. The next step will be to use them,” said Eva Olsson, president of the Nobel Committee in Physics.
Ferenc Krausz, from the Max Planck Institute for Quantum Optics, in Garching, Germany, was another of the winners. Today he was greeted by students and colleagues by phone (REUTERS / Christine Uyanik)
To illustrate how the history of science changed due to the work of the winners, Dr. Hernán Grecco, a Conicet researcher in the Quantum Electronics Laboratory of the Faculty of Exact and Natural Sciences of the University of Buenos Aires (UBA), He stated: “If we compare it to a car race, before the experiments that the winners did, the cars appeared moving in the photos. Now, however, we can take good photos.”
If you want to take a photo, you need to illuminate the scene. If the scene changes, the photo is blurred. But one way to avoid this is to illuminate for a very short time, and this is what the 2023 Nobel Prize winners did in physics. “They developed experimental techniques that allow us to generate very short pulses of light: 250 attoseconds,” Grecco highlighted.
The work of the Nobel winners is several decades old and “its technological applications are only now being seen. Among others, they will revolutionize the characterization of materials and medical diagnosis. “Its economic implications are enormous, but it all started a long time ago with a more fundamental question,” he said.
The results of the experiments that are recognized with the Nobel Prize in Physics have had various applications such as their use in surgery to correct myopia. (Getty)
For the Argentine scientist, “it was expected that at some point there would be a Nobel in this area of physics. In 1999, the Nobel Prize in Chemistry had been awarded to Ahmed Zewai for his work in femtochemistry. This 2023 Nobel Prize in Physics connects with that of 1999.
In this field of physics, Grecco recalled that “Dr. Oscar Martínez, who was a professor at the faculties of Exact and Engineering at the UBA, developed a device 40 years ago (known in the community as “Martínez compressor”) that allowed the generation of femtosecond pulses in the world. “It was a huge step in short-pulse physics and technology.”
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