Let there be light: The Hindu Editorial on the 2023 physics Nobel
According to the laws of quantum mechanics, the observable properties of electrons in matter — like a fruit or a rock — change in a few hundred attoseconds. To study these extremely rapid changes, special tools are needed, and Anne L’Huillier, Pierre Agostini, and Ferenc Krausz have received the 2023 physics Nobel Prize for building these tools. From the late 1980s, Dr. L’Huillier led several studies that found that an infrared beam shone on a volume of a noble gas produced multiple overtones: waves whose wavelength was an integer-fraction of the ‘original’ light wave. Her team also observed a peculiar relationship between the original wave’s frequency and the intensity of the overtones, and explained it using the existing laws of quantum mechanics — a milestone. Physicists realised that this reinforcing effect could be timed such that the gas emitted intense peaks with a pulse duration of a few attoseconds, with destructive interference achieving the cut-off.
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