Agostini, Krausz and L’Huillier bag Physics Nobel for study of electron dynamics in matter
L’Huillier discovered that many different overtones of light arose when she transmitted infrared laser light through a noble gas. Only four women have won the Nobel Physics Prize since the award was first handed out in 1901: Marie Curie (1903), Maria Goeppert Mayer (1963), Donna Strickland (2018) and Andrea Ghez (2020).
L'Huillier was one of the recipients of last year's prestigious Wolf Prize, whose laureates occasionally go on to win the Nobel.
Each overtone is a light wave with a given number of cycles for each cycle in the laser light.
They are caused by the laser light interacting with atoms in the gas; it gives some electrons extra energy that is then emitted as light. L’Huillier has continued to explore this phenomenon, laying the ground for subsequent breakthroughs.
It was earlier tipped that research into light, new materials and cosmic exploration may win the award.
The Nobel Prize for physics has been presented one day after Hungarian-American Katalin Karikó and American Drew Weissman received the Nobel Prize in medicine for their groundbreaking discoveries that paved the way for the development of mRNA vaccines against COVID-19, a disease that caused a deadly pandemic.
Last year, three scientists jointly received the physics prize for demonstrating that minuscule particles could maintain a connection with each other even when separated. Alain Aspect of France, John Clauser of the United States and Austria's Anton Zeilinger won the Nobel for their work into quantum entanglement, a concept once dismissed by Albert Einstein as «spooky action».
