This year’s Nobel Prize for Physics goes to Pierre Agostini (1968), Ferenc Krausz (1962) and Anne l’Huillier (1958) for unraveling ultra-fast changes in atoms and electrons, on the scale of attoseconds. An attosecond is one trillionth of a second.
Secretary General Hans Ellegren of the Swedish Royal Academy of Sciences in Stockholm announced the trio’s reward at a press conference at the end of the morning. The three laureates share the prize of 11 million Swedish crowns (950,000 euros).
In 1987, Anne l’Huillier discovered that light produced many different overtones when she shined infrared laser light through a noble gas. These overtones arise from the interaction of the laser light with atoms in the gas; it gives some electrons extra energy that is then emitted as light. l’Huillier thus laid the foundation for further discoveries.
Shortest time
In 2001, Pierre Agostini managed to produce a series of consecutive light pulses, with each pulse lasting only 250 attoseconds. Around the same time, Ferenc Krausz was working on a different kind of experiment, in which he managed to isolate a single light pulse that lasted 650 attoseconds. The extremely short light pulses can be used to measure the rapid processes by which electrons move or change energy.
The shortest time ever measured by physicists is 247 zeptoseconds.