AGI – Il Nobel Price for physics for 2023 it was awarded to one American and two European scientists. Pierre Agostinifrom Ohio University, Ferenc Krausz of the Max Planck Institute at the University of Munich e Anne L’Huillier from Lund University (Sweden) for studies on electrons and light rays.
This is how you can track electrons
This year’s three Nobel Prize winners in physics are being honored for their experiments that have given humanity new tools to explore the universe World of electrons in atoms and molecules. Pierre Agostini, Ferenc Krausz and Anne L’Huillier have shown a way to produce extremely short flashes of light that can be used to distinguish fast processes in which electrons move or change their energy.
In the Swedish Academy’s motivations we read: “For the human mind, rapid events flow into one another, just as in a film, which consists of individual still images but is perceived as a continuous flow.” If we want to examine it very briefly For these events is requires special technology. In the world of electrons, changes often occur on orders of magnitude of a few tens of attoseconds. An attosecond is so short that there are as many of them in one second as there are seconds in the entire age of the universe.”
This year’s winners “conducted experiments in which they demonstrated a way to produce flashes of light that last so short that they can be measured in attiseconds.” In doing so, they demonstrated a method of illuminating a moment short enough to to investigate what happens inside atoms and molecules.
Anne L’Huillier
Anne L’Huillier discovered in 1987 that a large number of different harmonics of light were created when she passed infrared laser light through an inert gas. Each harmonic is a light wave with a certain number of complete oscillations for each oscillation in the laser light. They are created when laser light interacts with atoms in the gas, giving certain electrons additional energy, which is then emitted as light. Anne L’Huillier further explored the phenomenon and showed the way for the discoveries that followed.
Pierre Agostini
In 2001, Pierre Agostini managed to generate and study a series of such light pulses one after the other, each pulse lasting only 250 attoseconds.
Ferenc Krausz
At the same time, Ferenc Krausz was working on an experiment of a different kind, in which he managed to isolate a single pulse of light that lasted 650 attoseconds. The winners’ work made it possible to research processes that take place in such a short time and were previously impossible to understand.
“Now we can open the door to the world of electrons. With attosecond physics we have the opportunity to understand the mechanisms controlled by electrons. The next step will be to use them,” says Eva Olsson, President of the Nobel Committee for Physics.
Possible uses can be found in a wide variety of areas. In electronics, for example, it is important to understand and control how electrons behave in materials. Attosecond pulses can also be used to identify various molecules, which could be useful in medical diagnostics.
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