Trio Wins Nobel Physics Prize For Works On Secrets Of The Atom

Scientists Pierre Agostini, Ferenc Krausz, and Anne L'Huillier won the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physics for creating ultra-short pulses of light that can provide a snapshot of changes within atoms, potentially leading to better disease detection, Niklas Pollard and Johann Ahlander reported for Reuters.

The prize-awarding academy stated that their studies had provided humanity with new tools for exploring the movement of electrons inside atoms and molecules, a phenomenon that was long thought impossible to trace. I Illustration: Niklas Elmehed, Nobel Prize Facebook

The prize-awarding academy stated that their studies had provided humanity with new tools for exploring the movement of electrons inside atoms and molecules, a phenomenon that was long thought impossible to trace.

Changes in electrons occur in a few tenths of an attosecond - a unit so short that there are as many attoseconds in one second as there have been seconds since the birth of the universe.

Eva Olsson, a member of the Nobel Prize in Physics Selection Committee, said, "The ability to generate attosecond pulses of light has opened the door to a tiny, extremely tiny, time scale and has also opened the door to the world of electrons."

There are potential applications of these findings in various areas. In electronics, it is essential to understand and control how electrons behave in a material.

The field also holds promise in areas such as a new in-vitro diagnostic technique for detecting characteristic molecular traces of diseases in blood samples, according to the academy.

Hungarian-born Krausz, whose team generated the first ultra-fast pulses in the early 2000s, has likened attosecond physics to a fast-shutter camera, where the short light flashes allow a freeze-frame look within the microcosm.

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