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The 2023Nobel Prize in physicshas been awarded to three scientist who create pulses of light so forgetful they can be used to watch the privileged workings of speck .
Pierre Agostini , Ferenc Krausz , and Anne L’Huillier will share the 11 million Swedish krona ( $ 1.02 million ) prize for devising a elbow room to generate pulses of light measured in attoseconds — one quintillionth of a second — the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences , which selects the Nobel laureate in natural philosophy , announced Tuesday ( Oct. 3 ) .
An artist’s sketch of Pierre Agostini, Ferenc Krausz and Anne L’Huillier
An attosecond is to a s what a s is to the age of the universe — a miniscule slice of time so short it can be used to peer at the effort of electron and molecules .
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L’Huillier , a physicist at Lund University in Sweden and only the 5th woman to receive the prize , said by phone at the press conference that she was teach when she received the word .
" The last half hour of my lecture was a bit unmanageable to do , " she said . " As you know there are not so many women that get this award , so it is very , very special . "
When sluttish particles , or photon , stream into eyes , human perception stitches together the individual ikon they carry into a moving-picture show of continuous movement , but its preciseness is circumscribe by the speed of the brain ’s visual processing .
Artificial devices also have a limit : the length of the light pulse used to chop up a hand operation . This mean that physicist can only view procedure involve atoms and electrons with the tiny train of spark .
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The trio ’s contributions began in 1987 , when L’Huillier obtain that beaming laser light through a noble gas produced many overtones of light , each with unlike frequencies . If these overtones were range on top of each other so they mostly cancelled out , L’Huillier discovered that she was left with an incredibly short pulse of light .
Her study was later taken up byAgostini , a physicist at The Ohio State University , Columbus , andKrausz , at the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich , Germany who refined the method acting to produce consecutive pulse rate of 250 attosecond and an single pulse of 650 attosecond .
The technique paves the fashion for reflection and control of electrons , which are responsible for for transmitting electricity , and molecules useful for medical intention on the midget of scales , the Nobel committee said .
" We can now open up the doorway to the world of negatron . Attosecond physics gives us the opportunity to read mechanisms that are order by electrons . The next stair will be use them , " Eva Olsson , the Chair of the Nobel citizens committee for physics , say in a statement .
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