The Nobel Prize in Physics 2023 was awarded to Pierre Agostini, Ferenc Krausz and Anne L’Huillier. Announcement of the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physics by Professor Hans Ellegren, Secretary General of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, on 3 October 2023.
The Nobel Prize in Physics 2023 was awarded to Pierre Agostini, Ferenc Krausz and Anne L’Huillier “for experimental methods that generate attosecond pulses of light for the study of electron dynamics in matter”.
Read more: Who is awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2023?
The Nobel Prize in Physics 2023
The Nobel Prize in Physics is awarded annually by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences to those who have made the most outstanding contributions in the field of physics. The prize was first awarded in 1901 to Wilhelm Röntgen for his discovery of X-rays.
Some of the most famous Nobel laureates in physics include Albert Einstein, Marie Curie, and Niels Bohr. The prize has also been awarded to several Indian physicists, including C. V. Raman and Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar.
The Nobel Prize in Physics is one of the most prestigious awards in the world, and it is a great honor to be a recipient. The prize is awarded to individuals and teams of up to three people. The laureates receive a gold medal, a diploma, and a share of the Nobel Prize prize money, which is currently around SEK 10 million (approximately US$1 million).
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Pierre Agostini: The Ohio State University, Columbus, USA
Ferenc Krausz: Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics, Garching and Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Germany
Anne L’Huillier: Lund University, Sweden
Experiments with light capture the shortest of moments: The three Nobel Laureates in Physics 2023 are being recognised for their experiments, which have given humanity new tools for exploring the world of electrons inside atoms and molecules. Pierre Agostini, Ferenc Krausz and Anne L’Huillier have demonstrated a way to create extremely short pulses of light that can be used to measure the rapid processes in which electrons move or change energy.
Source: Experiments with light capture the shortest of moments
The Nobel Prize in Physics 2022 was awarded jointly to Alain Aspect, John F. Clauser and Anton Zeilinger “for experiments with entangled photons, establishing the violation of Bell inequalities and pioneering quantum information science”.
Alain Aspect, John Clauser and Anton Zeilinger have each conducted groundbreaking experiments using entangled quantum states, where two particles behave like a single unit even when they are separated. Their results have cleared the way for new technology based upon quantum information.
List of Nobel laureates in Physics
| 2001 | Eric Allin Cornell (b. 1961) | United States | “for the achievement of Bose–Einstein condensation in dilute gases of alkali atoms, and for early fundamental studies of the properties of the condensates” |
| Carl Edwin Wieman (b. 1951) | |||
| Wolfgang Ketterle (b. 1957) | Germany | ||
| 2002 | Raymond Davis Jr. (1914–2006) | United States | “for pioneering contributions to astrophysics, in particular for the detection of cosmic neutrinos” |
| Masatoshi Koshiba (1926–2020) | Japan | ||
| Riccardo Giacconi (1931–2018) | Italy United States | “for pioneering contributions to astrophysics, which have led to the discovery of cosmic X-ray sources” | |
| 2003 | Alexei Alexeyevich Abrikosov (1928–2017) | Russia United States | “for pioneering contributions to the theory of superconductors and superfluids” |
| Vitaly Lazarevich Ginzburg (1916–2009) | Russia | ||
| Anthony James Leggett (b. 1938) | United Kingdom United States | ||
| 2004 | David J. Gross (b. 1941) | United States | “for the discovery of asymptotic freedom in the theory of the strong interaction” |
| Hugh David Politzer (b. 1949) | |||
| Frank Wilczek (b. 1951) | |||
| 2005 | Roy J. Glauber (1925–2018) | United States | “for his contribution to the quantum theory of optical coherence” |
| John L. Hall (b. 1934) | “for their contributions to the development of laser-based precision spectroscopy, including the optical frequency comb technique” | ||
| Theodor W. Hänsch (b. 1941) | Germany | ||
| 2006 | John C. Mather (b. 1946) | United States | “for their discovery of the blackbody form and anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background radiation” |
| George F. Smoot (b. 1945) | |||
| 2007 | Albert Fert (b. 1938) | France | “for the discovery of giant magnetoresistance” |
| Peter Grünberg (1939–2018) | Germany | ||
| 2008 | Makoto Kobayashi (b. 1944) | Japan | “for the discovery of the origin of the broken symmetry which predicts the existence of at least three families of quarks in nature” |
| Toshihide Maskawa (1940–2021) | |||
| Yoichiro Nambu (1921–2015) | Japan United States | “for the discovery of the mechanism of spontaneous broken symmetry in subatomic physics” | |
| 2009 | Charles K. Kao (1933–2018) | Hong Kong United Kingdom United States | “for groundbreaking achievements concerning the transmission of light in fibers for optical communication” |
| Willard S. Boyle (1924–2011) | Canada United States | “for the invention of an imaging semiconductor circuit – the CCD sensor” | |
| George E. Smith (b. 1930) | United States | ||
| 2010 | Andre Geim (b. 1958) | Russia United Kingdom Netherlands | “for groundbreaking experiments regarding the two-dimensional material graphene” |
| Konstantin Novoselov (b. 1974) | Russia United Kingdom | ||
| 2011 | Saul Perlmutter (b. 1959) | United States | “for the discovery of the accelerating expansion of the Universe through observations of distant supernovae” |
| Brian P. Schmidt (b. 1967) | Australia United States | ||
| Adam G. Riess (b. 1969) | United States | ||
| 2012 | Serge Haroche (b. 1944) | France | “for ground-breaking experimental methods that enable measuring and manipulation of individual quantum systems.” |
| David J. Wineland (b. 1944) | United States | ||
| 2013 | François Englert (b. 1932) | Belgium | “for the theoretical discovery of a mechanism that contributes to our understanding of the origin of mass of subatomic particles, and which recently was confirmed through the discovery of the predicted fundamental particle, by the ATLAS and CMS experiments at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider” |
| Peter Higgs (b. 1929) | United Kingdom | ||
| 2014 | Isamu Akasaki (1929–2021) | Japan | “for the invention of efficient blue light-emitting diodes which has enabled bright and energy-saving white light sources” |
| Hiroshi Amano (b. 1960) | |||
| Shuji Nakamura (b. 1954) | Japan United States | ||
| 2015 | Takaaki Kajita (b. 1959) | Japan | “for the discovery of neutrino oscillations, which shows that neutrinos have mass” |
| Arthur B. McDonald (b. 1943) | Canada | ||
| 2016 | David J. Thouless (1934–2019) | United Kingdom | “for theoretical discoveries of topological phase transitions and topological phases of matter” |
| F. Duncan M. Haldane (b. 1951) | United Kingdom Slovenia | ||
| John M. Kosterlitz (b. 1943) | United Kingdom United State | ||
| 2017 | Rainer Weiss (b. 1932) | Germany United States | “for decisive contributions to the LIGO detector and the observation of gravitational waves” |
| Kip Thorne (b. 1940) | United States | ||
| Barry Barish (b. 1936) | |||
| 2018 | Arthur Ashkin (1922–2020) | United States | “for groundbreaking inventions in the field of laser physics”, in particular “for the optical tweezers and their application to biological systems” |
| Gérard Mourou (b. 1944) | France | “for groundbreaking inventions in the field of laser physics”, in particular “for their method of generating high-intensity, ultra-short optical pulses” | |
| Donna Strickland (b. 1959) | Canada | ||
| 2019 | James Peebles (b. 1935) | Canada United States | “for theoretical discoveries in physical cosmology” |
| Michel Mayor (b. 1942) | Switzerland | “for the discovery of an exoplanet orbiting a solar-type star” | |
| Didier Queloz (b. 1966) | |||
| 2020 | Roger Penrose (b. 1931) | United Kingdom | “for the discovery that black hole formation is a robust prediction of the general theory of relativity” |
| Reinhard Genzel (b. 1952) | Germany | “for the discovery of a supermassive compact object at the centre of our galaxy” | |
| Andrea Ghez (b. 1965) | United States | ||
| 2021 | Syukuro Manabe (b. 1931) | Japan United State | “for the physical modelling of Earth’s climate, quantifying variability and reliably predicting global warming” |
| Klaus Hasselmann (b. 1931) | Germany | ||
| Giorgio Parisi (b. 1948) | Italy | “for the discovery of the interplay of disorder and fluctuations in physical systems from atomic to planetary scales” | |
| 2022 | Alain Aspect (b. 1947) | France | “for experiments with entangled photons, establishing the violation of Bell inequalities and pioneering quantum information science” |
| John Clauser (b. 1942) | United States | ||
| Anton Zeilinger (b. 1945) | Austria | ||
| 2023 | Anne L’Huillier (b. 1958) | France Sweden | “for experimental methods that generate attosecond pulses of light for the study of electron dynamics in matter” |
| Ferenc Krausz (b. 1962) | Hungary Austria | ||
| Pierre Agostini (b. 1945) | France United States |
Practice MCQs:
Q. The Nobel Prize in Physics 2023 was awarded to which of the following?
[1] Pierre Agostini
[2] Ferenc Krausz
[3] Anne L’Huillier
[4] All of the above
Answer: 4
The Nobel Prize in Physics 2023 was awarded to Pierre Agostini, Ferenc Krausz and Anne L’Huillier “for experimental methods that generate attosecond pulses of light for the study of electron dynamics in matter”.