2023 Nobel in Physics – Initial thoughts

One should not be surprised nowadays if a Nobel prize in physics goes to something related to light. As a person working in optics and light-matter interaction, I welcome any recognition of one of the most profound aspects of nature: light. This time, the prize has gone to some great experimental effort dating back to the late 1980s to early 2000s when amazing progress was made in three aspects related to the prize: a) higher harmonic generation of light in rare gases, b) production of a train of attosecond light pulses, and c) eventually production of single attosecond light pulses that can interact with matter, especially electrons in matter. Such an interaction can lead to the mapping of dynamics of quantum entities such as electrons and will have far-reaching consequences in probing the internal degrees of molecules and atoms. The scientific information published by the Nobel Committee has wonderful illustrations and is worth reading.

This time, the Nobel Prize website has published a fantastic set of illustrations to convey the relevance of the research. The above one shows the spectrum of temporal scales. It elegantly illustrates the breadth of the scale – attosecond to heartbeat:: Heartbeat to the age of the universe.. Oh, how beautiful science is!

Via Twitter, thanks to a student who was attending a lecture by Anne (one of the Nobel laureates), we got to see continuing her lecture even after a Nobel announcement. Now that is the spirit of academics!

This is the fundamental paper that triggered higher harmonic generation in gases and laid the foundation for attosecond pulse generation. of today, the impact factor of this journal is 1.6. The impact is not proportional to the impact factor of a journal

Author: G.V. Pavan Kumar

Namaste, Hola & Welcome from G.V. Pavan Kumar. I am a Professor of Physics at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Pune, India. My research interests are : (1) Optics & Soft Matter: Optically Induced Forces – Assembly, Dynamics & Function; (2) History and Philosophy of Science – Ideas in Physical Sciences. I am interested in the historical and philosophical evolution of ideas and tools in the physical sciences and technology. I research the intellectual history of past scientists, innovators, and people driven by curiosity, and I write about them from an Indian and Asian perspective. My motivation is to humanize science. In the same spirit, I write and host my podcast Pratidhvani – Humanizing Science. View all posts by G.V. Pavan Kumar