Nobel Prize in Physics 2023

Every year the Nobel Prizes are presented to deserving individuals who have greatly contributed to society through their work in the fields of Medicine or Physiology, Literature, Chemistry, Economics and Peace. The aim behind awarding the Nobel Prize is to acknowledge and appreciate the immense hard work and dedication shown by these great minds. 

This year, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the Nobel Prize in  Physics 2023 to a trio comprising Pierre Agostini, Ferenc Krausz and Anne L’Huillier “for experimental methods that generate attosecond pulses of light for the study of electron dynamics in matter”. 

When two very fast-moving objects are seen by humans, we see them as a continuous flow. For example, when you watch the blades of a fan that has been switched on, you cannot notice the individual blades moving separately. Rather, what you see is a continued, uniform circular motion of the blades, which look connected. 

If we want to observe motions or changes at the sub-microscopic level (extremely minute objects), such as in the case of atoms and electrons, we need a special kind of technology. This technology should allow scientists to see changes that happen in electrons in a very short time, measured in attoseconds. An attosecond is much shorter than a second. Billions of attoseconds can fit inside one second. 

Pierre Agostini, Ferenc Krausz and Anne L’Huillier have conducted many successful experiments and created short pulses of light which can measure the changes that happen in electrons. This groundbreaking invention has won them the Nobel Prize in Physics 2023.