Distinguished Lecture - Attosecond physics - Anne L'Huillier, 2023 Nobel Prize in Physics

Attosecond pulses of light for studying electron dynamics

When an intense laser interacts with a gas of atoms, high-order harmonics are generated. In the time domain, this radiation forms a train of extremely short light pulses, of the order of 100 attoseconds. Attosecond pulses allow the study of the dynamics of electrons in atoms and molecules, using pump-probe techniques. This presentation will highlight some of the key steps in the field of attosecond science.

Anne L'Huillier

Professor of atomic physics at Lund University in Sweden, Anne L'Huillier is a French physicist who was awarded the 2023 Nobel prize for her theoretical and experimental work with attosecond pulses of light.
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General scientific context:
In order to measure or depict rapid processes, any measurement must be done more quickly than the time it takes for the system being studied to undergo a noticeable change, otherwise the result is imprecise. An atom's natural time scale is incredibly short: in a molecule, atoms can move and turn in millionths of a billionth of a second, femtoseconds. However, in the world of electrons, positions and energies change at speeds of between one and a few hundred attoseconds, where an attosecond is one billionth of a billionth of a second. Improving existing technology was not enough to see processes occurring on the amazingly brief timescales of electrons; something entirely new was required. Anne L’Huillier and her fellow laureates of the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physics, Pierre Agostini and Ferenc Krausz, conducted experiments that demonstrate a method for producing pulses of light that are brief enough to capture images of processes inside atoms and molecules, opening up the new research field of attosecond physics. More information

^{Image credits: (1) Pixabay; (2) LTH; (3) A. L'Huillier}