Scientists Pierre Agostini, Ferenc Krausz and Anne L’Huillier won the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physics for using pulses of light to study the behaviour of electrons, in work which could advance medical diagnostics and electronics, the award-giving body said.
The prize, which was raised this year to 11 million Swedish crowns (about $1 million), is awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
The academy said the work by the trio had given humanity new tools for exploring the world of electrons inside atoms and molecules with applications in fields such as electronics and medical diagnostics.
“The laureates’ experiments have produced pulses of light so short that they are measured in attoseconds, thus demonstrating that these pulses can be used to provide images of processes inside atoms and molecules,” it said in a statement. L’Huillier told a news conference, “it is really a prestigious prize and I’m so happy to get it. It’s incredible.”
She works at Lund University in Sweden and Agostini is a professor at Ohio State University in the United States. Krausz is director at Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics.—Reuters
