Today, we celebrate the first Lund University Nobel Laureate. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the Nobel Prize in Physics 2023 to Pierre Agostini, the Ohio State University, Columbus, USA, Ferenc Krausz, Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics, Garching and Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Germany – and Anne L’Huillier, Lund University, Sweden.
Anne L’Huillier was in the middle of lecturing students in atom physics, when her phone started to buzz. During a scheduled break, she got the announcement from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences – she is one of the 2023 years Nobel Laureates in Physics. After getting the news, L’Huillier returned to her students and told them that the lecture would end slightly earlier today. With only minutes left until the Nobel Prize was to be announced, the students understood what was happening, and it is not an exaggeration to say that the lecture truly became historic.
During the press conference after the physics prize was announced, one of the journalists asked what the next step was now that Anne L’Huillier had received the highest award one can receive.
“The next step is to stay where I am, regardless of what happened today. That’s my goal, to continue researching and teaching just as I do today, work with my research group, and continue to be myself,” replied Anne L’Huillier.
“We are incredibly proud and happy that Anne L’Huillier has been awarded the Nobel Prize. In addition to being a world-leading researcher, she is a humble person and an important role model for young researchers and all LTH students. I hope that our researchers and students will be energised by the fact that a highly talented LTH Professor got the Nobel Prize in Physics 2023,” says Annika Olsson, Dean of the Faculty of Engineering, LTH.
From the Nobel Prize press release:
Experiments with light capture the shortest of moments
The three Nobel Laureates in Physics 2023 are being recognized for their experiments, which have given humanity new tools for exploring the world of electrons inside atoms and molecules. 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 a 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.
Anne L’Huillier has continued to explore this phenomenon, laying the ground for subsequent breakthroughs.
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.
Previously impossible to follow
The laureates’ contributions have enabled the investigation of processes that are so rapid they were previously impossible to follow.
“We can now open the door to the world of electrons. Attosecond physics allows us to understand mechanisms that are governed by electrons. The next step will be utilizing them,” says Eva Olsson, Chair of the Nobel Committee for Physics.
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.