Hungarian physicist Ferenc Krausz, French physicists Pierre Agostini and Anne L'Huillier received this year's Nobel Prize in Physics for experimental methods that generate attosecond pulses of light for the study of electron dynamics in matter – as announced on 3 October 2023 at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm. The results of Professor Krausz’ pioneering work are utilised worldwide, including at the ELI-ALPS Laser Research Institute in Szeged. This accolade reaffirms that Hungary has consistently provided exceptional talents to the world, and this is true not only in the past, but also in the present.
Examination of increasingly smaller scales in space and time using ultra-short-duration light pulses took centre stage in his research in the early 1990s. This focus was enabled by the rapid advancements in femtosecond laser technology at that time. Ferenc Krausz was instrumental in perfecting this method in close collaboration with laser physicists at the Research Institute for Solid State Physics and Optics (now an institute of the HUN-REN Wigner Research Centre for Physics). As a result of this work, his team led the world in generating and measuring attosecond light pulses in the early 2000s.
This allowed Professor Krausz to perform real-time observations of electron motion at the atomic scale for the first time. Since then, the technique he developed has been used in various atomic and molecular physics processes, such as the investigation of the time-dependence of photoionization.
Congratulations to Professor Krausz for being awarded the Nobel Prize, the pinnacle of international scientific accolades.