Pierre Agostini
Facts
© Nobel Prize Outreach. Photo: Clément Morin
Pierre Agostini
The Nobel Prize in Physics 2023
Born: 23 July 1941, Tunis, French protectorate of Tunisia (now Tunisia)
Affiliation at the time of the award: The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA
Prize motivation: “for experimental methods that generate attosecond pulses of light for the study of electron dynamics in matter”
Prize share: 1/3
Work
Electronic motions initiate processes that create and maintain life, and are behind the exchange of energy between light and matter. These are arguably the most important motions for human life, evolving in hundreds of attoseconds. Attosecond pulses allow us to capture them inside atoms, molecules and solids. In 2001, Pierre Agostini succeeded in producing and investigating a series of consecutive light pulses, in which each pulse lasted just 250 attoseconds. Potential applications of attosecond pulses include in electronics and medical diagnostics.
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