2023 Nobel Prize in Physics announced, three scientists win for attosecond light pulses

According to news from this site on October 3, the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physics was announced to be awarded to Pierre Agostini, Ferenc Kraus and Anne Loulier in recognition of their research on matter. Experimental methods for generating attosecond light pulses in electron dynamics

Officials stated that “their contribution enables the study of extremely short processes that were previously untrackable” and 11 million Swedish kronor (Note from this site: The prize (approximately RMB 7.3 million) will be divided equally among the three winners.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said three physicists "demonstrated a method of creating extremely short light pulses that can be used to measure the rapid process of electron movement or energy change", which "opens the door for human exploration of atoms and molecules" The electronic world within offers new avenues”.

Because the time scale of people’s observation of the world has reached the order of attoseconds (as, that is, 10^-18 s) , the spatial resolution that people can observe can also reach the atomic scale (0.1 nm) and subatomic scale (such as the breakage and reorganization of molecular bonds).

In this time and space scale, the boundaries of people’s research on biology, chemistry and physics are becoming increasingly blurred, because the root of these microscopic phenomena lies in the movement of electrons

Therefore , attosecond light pulses came into being. The emergence of attosecond pulse laser is considered to be one of the most important milestones in the history of laser science, and its application prospects are immeasurable. It has now become an important research method in many fields such as physics, chemistry, and biology.

Usually we divide lasers into continuous lasers and pulsed lasers based on their luminous duration. Pulsed lasers work by emitting light pulses in a series of small intervals, and their peak power is very high. With the continuous development of laser technology, the pulse width of lasers is also constantly shrinking. In 2001, Ferenc Kraus's research group experimentally successfully used gas high-order harmonics to generate a single optical pulse with a pulse width of 650 as, making the optical pulse width reach the attosecond level for the first time, and later its width Breakthroughs continue. For example, my country's Xi'an Institute of Optics and Mechanics obtained attosecond optical pulse generation and measurement results of 75 as in 2021.

Everyone should have understood half of it by now. Attosecond light pulse is a light pulse with extremely short luminous duration. The width is less than 1 fs (femtosecond, that is, 10-15

s). It is currently worth mentioning that attosecond pulse laser is mainly realized by high-order harmonics generated by femtosecond laser (also called ultrafast and ultra-strong laser) acting on inert gas

The emergence of attosecond light pulses enables people to combine ultra-high time resolution at the attosecond level and ultra-high spatial resolution at the atomic scale to achieve control and understanding of extremely ultrafast processes in the atomic-subatomic microscopic world. dream.

In view of its huge potential application value, the United States, Europe, Japan, etc. have listed attosecond laser technology as one of the most important development directions for the development of laser science in the next 10 years.

Before the emergence of attosecond light pulses, the theoretical basis for generating ultrashort pulse lasers has always been Einstein's energy level transition stimulated emission. According to the stimulated emission theory, electrons at the bound energy level can only move near the nucleus, and the energy stored is limited. Generally, the wavelength corresponding to the photons emitted by the upper and lower energy level transitions is near visible light. An optical period of visible light is generally above 1 fs, which is obviously difficult to use to further generate shorter attosecond light pulses.

At present, people mostly use attosecond light pulses to study ultrafast electron dynamics in atoms and molecules. The physical phenomena of atoms are mainly electron ionization in atoms, multi-electron Auger decay, and electron excitation relaxation. Yuhe imaging, etc., while the research on molecules mainly focuses on the dissociation process and control of molecules, the coupling of molecular vibration and rotation with ultrafast electron motion, etc.

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