Nobel Prize in Physics awarded for “the door to the world of electrons”

The trio of scientists awarded the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physics have demonstrated a way to create extremely short pulses of light that can be used to measure rapid processes in which electrons move or change energy.

So, the award will be received by Pierre Agostini (Ohio State University, Columbus, USA), Ferenc Kraus (Max Planck Institute for Quantum Optics, Garching and Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Germany) and French-born Anna L’Huillier (Lund University, Sweden) – “for experimental methods generating attosecond pulses of light to study the dynamics of electrons in matter”

The scientists were recognized for their experiments, which gave humanity new tools to explore the world of electrons inside atoms and molecules. Pierre Agostini, Ferenc Kraus and Anna L’Huillier have demonstrated a way to create extremely short pulses of light that can be used to measure rapid processes in which electrons move or change energy.

Fast-moving events flow into each other when perceived by people, just as a film composed of still images is perceived as continuous motion, the Nobel Prize website explains. If we want to study truly short-term 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 of them in one second as there have been seconds since the birth of the Universe.

The 2023 laureates’ experiments produced pulses of light so short that they are measured in attoseconds, demonstrating that these pulses can be used to image processes inside atoms and molecules.

In 1987, Anne L’Huillier discovered that passing infrared laser light through an inert gas produced many different shades of light. Each overtone represents a light wave with a given number of cycles for each cycle in the laser light. They are caused by laser radiation interacting with gas atoms; this gives some electrons extra energy, which is then emitted as light. Anne L’Huillier continued to explore this phenomenon, laying the groundwork for subsequent breakthroughs.

In 2001, Pierre Agostini succeeded in creating and studying a series of sequential light pulses in which each pulse lasted only 250 attoseconds. At the same time, Ferenc Kraus was working on a different type of experiment, which made it possible to isolate a single light pulse lasting 650 attoseconds.

The laureates’ contribution made it possible to study processes that occur so quickly that it was previously impossible to follow them.

“Now we can open the door to the world of electrons. Attosecond physics gives us the opportunity to understand the mechanisms that govern electrons. The next step is to use them,” explained Eva Olsson, chair of the Nobel Physics Committee.

There are potential applications in many different areas. For example, in electronics, it is important to understand and control the behavior of electrons in a material. Attosecond pulses can also be used to identify various molecules, for example in medical diagnostics

As usual, on the eve of Nobel week, various experts made predictions about the “Nobel winners” in physics for 2023.

Thus, Physics World, discussing the winners, admits: “In the past, we made only one correct prediction. It was in 2013 that Peter Higgs and Francois Englert won a prize for their prediction of the Higgs mechanism, work they had done back in 1964. It would have been a real shock if the pair had not received the prize that year, because it was in 2012 that physicists at CERN announced that the Higgs boson had finally been discovered.”

“Over the past few decades,” continues Physics World, “we have made many predictions that did not come true in the years in which they were made. But it does mean that we have shortlisted candidates, some of whom have gone on to win prizes. The 2022 Prize is a great example of this. All three winners – Alain Aspect, John Clauser and Anton Zeilinger – were on our forecast list back in 2013. Also featured on our 2013 list (and our 2009 forecast) were Michael Major and Dieder Queloz, who shared the 2019 award with Jim Peebles. So it looks like if you keep making predictions, they will eventually come true!”

Based on the fact that in three of the last six years the prizes have been awarded to physicists working in the fields of astronomy, astrophysics and cosmology, Physics World predictors are guessing that the 2023 laureates will not work in these fields, which they believe will excludes an award related to the James Webb Space Telescope. Since last year’s prize was awarded in the field of quantum physics, it may seem foolish to predict another prize in this field. “However,” notes Physics World, “quantum computing has advanced by leaps and bounds over the past few decades, so we predict a prize for developing the theoretical foundations of quantum computing. Potential recipients include Ignacio Sirac, David Deutsch, Peter Shore and Peter Zoller. Another prize in the field of quantum physics, which will be awarded for a long time, will go to Yakir Aharonov and Michael Berry for the discoveries that bear their names. These are the Aharonov-Bohm effect and the Berry phase—two bizarre and profound consequences of the mathematics of quantum theory.”

But the prize for achievements in the field of condensed matter has not been awarded since 2016, and in 2018, scientists were last awarded for work in the field of atomic, molecular and optical physics. “Both of these areas are huge, so they look very promising for prizes in 2023,” Physics World writes. – Some of our favorite people working in these fields are Federico Capasso for his significant contributions to photonics; Lena Howe for her work on slow lighting; and Pablo Jarillo-Herrero for his work on twisted graphene.”

One place to look for potential Nobel laureates is the list of Wolf Prize laureates in physics, Physics World notes. The most recent recipients are Paul Corkum, Ferenc Krausz and Anne L’Houllier “for pioneering contributions to ultrafast laser science and attosecond physics.” So their names were included in the list of possible Nobel winners.

In general, the names of the nominees nominated for the Nobel Prize in Physics, as well as other information about the nominations, are kept secret and can only be revealed after half a century. The nomination and selection process begins with the Nobel Committee for Physics sending out confidential forms to qualified individuals. The right to submit proposals for the award of the Nobel in physics is enjoyed by: Swedish and foreign members of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences; members of the Nobel Committee for Physics; Nobel Prize winners in physics; full-time professors of physical sciences at universities and institutes of technology in the Scandinavian countries, as well as at the Karolinska Institutet (Stockholm), etc.

The selection of award winners is the responsibility of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, which appoints a working body (the Nobel Committee in Physics) that reviews nominations and submits proposals to determine the final candidates.

In total, from 1901 to 2022, the Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded 116 times, and in only 47 cases the award went to a single laureate, in other cases it was divided among several scientists. So, last year the prize was shared between three Alain Aspe, John F. Clauser and Anton Zeilinger – “for experiments with entangled photons, establishing a violation of Bell’s inequalities and innovation in quantum information science.”

Thus, over the past years, the prize has been received by 222 people – among them the American scientist John Bardeen, the only two-time Nobel laureate in physics (he first received this prize together with William Bradford Shockley and Walter Brattain in 1956, and the second time – in 1972 – along with Leon Neil Cooper and John Robert Schrieffer for the seminal theory of conventional superconductors).

As of 2022, only four women have won the prize in physics. The last recipient in 2020 was American Andrea Goetz. Before her, the Nobel in physics was awarded to Marie Curie (by the way, she received not only the award in physics in 1903, but also the prize in chemistry in 1911), Maria Goeppert-Mayer (she was awarded jointly with Hans Jensen in 1963 “for discoveries concerning the shell structure of the nucleus”), as well as Donna Strickland from Canada, awarded in 2018 for “pivotal inventions in the field of laser physics.” Now there are more women Nobel laureates in physics – thanks to Anna L’Huillier.

The youngest laureate in this category for more than a century has been Lawrence Bragg from Australia, who received the prize in 1915 at the age of 25 along with his father William Henry Bragg for his services to the study of crystals using X-rays. And the youngest of the Nobel laureates in physics in 2018 was 96-year-old Arthur Ashkin.

Another interesting statistical fact: about a quarter of all Nobel Prize winners in physics are immigrants – that is, those who have died or are currently living in a country other than their birth country.

Several of our compatriots have received the Nobel Prize in Physics in past years. In 1958, the merits of three Soviet scientists were recognized (Pavel Cherenkov, Ilya Frank and Igor Tamm), in 1962 the prize was awarded to Lev Landau, and in 1964 – to Nikolai Basov and Alexander Prokhorov. In 1978, the Nobel Prize in Physics was given to Peter Kapitsa. In 2000, Zhores Alferov became the Nobel laureate in physics, and in 2003, Alexey Abrikosov and Vitaly Ginzburg. In 2010, Andrey Geim and Konstantin Novoselov became laureates.