Nobel laureate delivers lecture on attosecond light pulses in Shanghai

The latest session of the Shanghai Master Forum on Science was held at Fudan University on Saturday, featuring a lecture by Nobel Prize-winning physicist Anne L'Huillier from Sweden, who was on her first trip to China.

L'Huillier, who shared the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physics with two other scientists for developing methods to generate attosecond light pulses, delivered an academic presentation and engaged in in-depth discussions with students from the university after the event.

During the lecture attended by faculty and students from universities and high schools in Shanghai, the scientist described one attosecond as an incredibly brief time span, comparable to the ratio of one second to the age of the universe. Such attosecond light pulses act as the world's fastest "camera", capable of capturing the ultrafast motion of electrons within atoms, heralding a new era in the observation of the microscopic world.

Her research led to the unexpected discovery of a key phenomenon in producing attosecond light pulses, which significantly advanced the fields of ultrafast laser science and attosecond physics.

The technology has been applied across various domains, including physics, chemistry, biomedical science, and semiconductor testing, with the potential to evolve from mere observation to active manipulation of the microscopic world, she said.

"Unexpected experimental results often lead to new discoveries, and theory and experiments are equally important," she said, adding that she encourages young students to pursue studies in different regions to gain new enlightenment, and she supports women in science.