The Wolf Prize in Physics for 2022 was awarded to Professors: Anne L'Houlier, Lund University in Sweden; Paul Corkum, University of Ottawa; Franz Krauss, Max Planck Institute for Quantum Optics and Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich for pioneering and innovative work in the field of science of ultrafast lasers and the physics of attoseconds, and for high temporal resolution imaging that characterizes the movement of electrons in atoms, molecules and solids.
Anne L'Houlière, Paul Korkham and Franz Kraus share the 2022 Wolf Prize in Physics for pioneering and innovative work in the science of ultrafast lasers and the physics of attoseconds, and for imaging with high temporal resolution characterizing the movement of electrons in atoms, molecules and solids. The three winners have made decisive contributions both to the development of the technology of autosecond physics and to its application to the needs of basic research in the field of physics.
Attosecond science deals with the interaction between radiation and matter and the investigation of phenomena whose time scale is a number of attoseconds (10-18 seconds). According to quantum theory, this time scale characterizes phenomena related to the dynamics of electrons. Autosecond science studies and models such processes mainly using laser devices with ultra-short pulses in this time domain. This enables a deeper understanding of important physical processes, for example tunneling processes, or the delay in photoionization processes in atoms, the advancement of a charge in a molecule, or ultrafast currents and correlations of electrons in lattices. The long-term goal is to control in a controlled manner the movement of electrons in the material of its types.
Lasers with ultra-short pulses are the most important means of research in attosecond physics and the breakthroughs in the technologies of such lasers are closely related to the important discoveries in the field. The ability to shorten the time pulses (the length of the pulses) of lasers is getting better over time. A time duration of picoseconds (10-12 seconds) shortly after the invention of the laser, to femtoseconds (10-15 seconds) and recently also auto-seconds; Where is the forefront of research in this field today. The transition from femtosecond pulses to attosecond pulses was made possible with the help of a phenomenon known as "creating high harmonics", and is a scientific-technological breakthrough. Understanding the processes associated with the creation of ultra-short pulses with durations of attoseconds, and their use for tracking and sampling different configurations of electrons in atoms, molecules, and solid matter, with important insights and applications in many fields of science and technology, are the basis of the groundbreaking work of the Wolf Prize winner and winners for the year 2022.
Attosecond physics has several current applications and great potential for the future. For example, the ability to control the movement of electrons
On an atomic scale, a molecule can break down or form new bonds that change its properties. This makes it possible to change the function of various molecules, including important biological molecules, and this has the potential to help in the fight against diseases. The ability to control the movement of electrons on smaller and smaller time scales will most likely also lead to innovative developments in the field of electronic devices, for example, to the development of advanced chips and computers.
Anne L'Hollier
University of Lund
L'Houlier, was born in Paris and today serves as a professor of atomic physics at the University of Lund in Sweden, where she leads her groundbreaking research. L'Houlier deals in the field of fast laser pulses and her work focuses on the interaction between short and intense light pulses and atoms. According to her, one of her sources of inspiration, during her childhood, was "Apollo 11", the first space mission to land a man on the moon, in 1969. She was also greatly influenced by her grandfather, who was a professor of electrical engineering and worked on communications in the field of radio. These and others brought her great enthusiasm for science and technology at an early age, which later made her a prominent scientist and leader in the field of attosecond physics.
L'Houllier holds a BA in Mathematics and a double MA in Theoretical Physics and Mathematics from the Pierre and Marie Curie University in Paris.
Later, she changed direction to the field of experimental physics and completed her doctorate in 1986, at Pierre VI University. L'Houlier acquired her post-doctorate in 1986 at the Chalmers Institute of Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden, and received a permanent position as a researcher at the CEA (French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission). In 1987, L'Houlière participated in an experiment in which high harmonics were observed for the first time using a picosecond laser system. She was fascinated by the experiment and decided to devote her time to work in this field of research. In 1988 she continued her post-doctorate at the University of California, Los Angeles. Later she moved to Lund University in Sweden where she became a full professor in 1997. In 2004, L'Hollier was elected a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
Anne L'Houlière was among the first to experimentally demonstrate the creation of higher harmonics, the process that causes attosecond beats, and contributed significantly to the development of the theoretical explanation of this process. She also performed a number of crucial experiments that improved the understanding of the process and was a key player in the creation of the research field of autosecond science.
Paul Bruce Corkham
University of Ottawa
Korkam, Canadian physicist, leader and pioneer in the field of ultrafast laser spectroscopy. His scientific work for three decades
It was a source of significant insights that led to the latest breakthroughs in this field. Corkham is best known for its outgoing contribution
The wall in the field of creating high harmonics and building intuitive models that contributed to the explanation of the complex phenomena of the spectroscopy of attoseconds.
Corkham often notes that he owes his career to his high school physics teacher, Anthony Kent, who pushed him to prove anything.
According to him, this is exactly what Fizkai is supposed to and wants to do. Corkem grew up in Saint John, New Brunswick, a small port city on the east coast of Canada. As the son of a fisherman and a tugboat captain, he spent much of his time around boats, sailing with his father, learning and repairing different types of engines. He began his career as a theoretical physicist and completed his doctoral thesis in theoretical physics at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania in 1973. When asked during an interview for a postdoctoral position at the National Research Council of Canada (NRC "Why do you think you can also do experimental physics?" he could confidently answer this based on his childhood experience: "It's not a problem at all. I can completely disassemble car engine, fix it and put it back together to make it work." He was accepted as a full-fledged researcher and at the NRC built one of the world's most famous groups in the field of latoseconds. Today, Korkham serves as a research chair at the University of Ottawa in Canada and directs the Joint Latosecond Laboratory to the NRC and the University of Ottawa.Corkham is a Fellow of the Royal Societies of London and Canada and a Foreign Fellow of the US National Academy of Sciences, the Austrian Academy of Sciences, and the Russian Academy of Sciences.
Paul Corkham established the understanding of creating high harmonics by developing a semi-classical "repeated collision model". In this model, an electron passes through a tunnel under the influence of a strong laser field, is accelerated by the field and finally undergoes a collision with the ion accompanied by the emission of high harmonics. The spectrum of emitted harmonics is sensitive to the change in time of the atomic or molecular structure. Harmonic spectroscopy allowed him to demonstrate the possibility of obtaining a picture of a molecular orbital with the help of a tomographic reconstruction procedure.
Franz Krauss
Max-Planck Institute for Quantum Optics and Uni' Ludwig Maximilian in Munich
Kraus, a Hungarian-Austrian physicist whose research team was the first to produce and measure a few attosecond pulses of light that he used
Following the movement of electrons within an atom.
Kraus received a master's degree in electrical engineering in 1985 at the Budapest University of Technology. He completed his doctorate in quantum electronics from the Vienna University of Technology with honors in 1991, and his post-doctorate at the same university in 1993. In 1998, he joined the electrical engineering department at the same university and was promoted to the rank of full professor a year later. In 2003 he was appointed director of the Max Planck Institute for Quantum Optics in Garching, Germany. Since 2004, he has also served as a professor of physics and head of the experimental physics group at the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich.
Krauss was always interested in exploring smaller and smaller dimensions of space and time. Back in the early 90s, when he was working on his doctorate
At the Vienna University of Technology, he was impressed with the idea of doing this by using short pulses of light from pulsed lasers
modern The first autosecond pulses were created and measured by Kraus and his research group in the early 2000s. This work allowed him to make, for the first time, real-time observations of electron movements within atoms. Today we use such pulses to better understand, and also to change, various microscopic processes in atoms and molecules.
Kraus's research work at the Max Planck Institute includes several exciting new applications. Together with his research group, he is trying to use femtosecond and attosecond technology to analyze blood samples and detect tiny changes in their composition. The purpose of the research is to check whether such changes can allow accurate diagnosis of diseases already in their early stages.
Franz Krauss showed that the durations of harmonic beats are in the domain of autoseconds. He contributed to the construction of a laser with pulses of several cycles and studied the time dependence of many physical processes in atoms and molecules. Kraus realized the feasibility of experiments with time resolution in the autosecond domain. This allows the photoionization process to be followed in real time and experimentally proved what is known as "Wiger delay" in the process of electron emission from atoms and molecules as a result of interaction with photons.
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