Reacción a "Reactions: Nobel Prize in Physics to Agostini, Krausz and L'Huillier for developing light pulses to study the motion of electrons in matter"

The Swedish academy awarded this prize for attosecond research. This is a young scientific field, born in the present century. In 2001, F. Krausz generated in his laboratory in Vienna the first light pulse with a duration on the attosecond time scale (1 attosecond is one trillionth of a second), thus making it possible, for the first time, to capture time-lapse images of the motion of electrons in matter. It was the crowning achievement of very rapid advances in laser technology, with significant contributions from P. Agostini and A. L'Huillier.   

This technology has made it possible to obtain experimental measurements that only a few decades ago seemed unattainable, from being able to quantify the time differences in the emission of electrons from different levels of the same atom, to visualising in real time the redistribution of charges in biological molecules. Attosecond pulses have been able to access the most fundamental mechanisms governing the formation and breaking of chemical bonds, i.e. to get to the heart of physics and chemistry at its most fundamental level. And it looks like this may just be the beginning of attochemistry, attobiology and, who knows, atto-medicine. Applications are on the way. 

Beyond the joy of being able to congratulate one of our collaborators, A. L'Huillier, and other colleagues in our scientific community, for us, working in attosecond science, this Nobel Prize is an incentive and a motivating element, as it recognises a relatively young science. The great applications of this technology are still to come, and such recognition always serves as an incentive. Hopefully, it will boost the already incipient applications in other areas such as chemistry and even biology.