Three scientists who have been actively studying the properties of electrons have been awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for the year 2023. Pierre Agostini, Ferenz Kraus, and Ann L’yulye have been acknowledged for their groundbreaking experiments that have provided humanity with new tools for studying electrons inside atoms and molecules. The announcement was made by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
The scientists, hailing from the United States, Germany, and Sweden, have used ultra-short light pulses to observe the movement of electrons within atoms and to create chemical bonds crucial for the formation of molecules. According to Robert Rosner, the president of the American Physical Society, atoms consist of a nucleus surrounded by clouds of electrons, and it is through the interaction of these electron clouds that molecules are formed.
Agostini is a professor at Ogai State University, Kraus holds positions at the Max-Plankovskiy Institute of Quantum Optics and Ludwig-Maximilian University of Munich, and L’yulye is a professor at the University of Lunda in Sweden. L’yulye becomes the fifth woman to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics.
The work recognized by this prestigious prize falls within the field of Attosecond Physics. This term is derived from the duration of the short light pulses utilized in the experiments, which lasted for an entire attosecond. An attosecond is a unit of time in the international system of units, equal to 1 × 10⁻¹⁸ seconds. To put this into perspective, an attosecond in relation to a second is equivalent to a second in relation to approximately 31.71 billion years.