Gábor Szabó, Anne L'Huillier, Katalin Varjú and Ferenc Krausz
At the invitation of ELI ALPS, Nobel Laureate physicist Anne L’Huillier, Professor of Atomic Physics at Lund University, attended our Attosecond Symposium as a guest of honour and gave a talk with the title “The Route to Attosecond Pulses”. Anne L’Huillier was born in Paris in 1958 and has been working at Lund University in Sweden since 1995, where she was appointed full professor in 1997. In 2022, she shared the Wolf Prize for Physics with Paul Corkum and Ferenc Krausz. In 2023, she jointly received the Nobel Prize for Physics with Pierre Agostini and Ferenc Krausz.
Anne L'Huillier
In her lecture, the French-Swedish professor outlined the history of the development of attophysics, her research results and highlighted the involvement of the University of Lund in the development of our SYLOS GHHG laser in the past decade. She also emphasized that the collaboration with the Szeged based research centre forms a significant part of her professional life and it stands close to her heart.
Anne L’Huillier was followed on the rostrum by Balázs Major (Recent Experiments and Developments at the 100-kHz High Harmonic Beamlines of ELI ALPS), Zsolt Divéki (High Harmonic Generation from the EUV to Soft X-rays) and Subhendu Kahaly (Selected Trends and Applications of High Harmonic EUV Sources).
“What was it like to present after Anne L’Huillier?” we asked Balázs Major. “At first, I didn’t realize what a huge opportunity and honour it was for me, a young researcher. I consider myself an experienced speaker, but I tensed up a bit when I was asked to take the floor. Fortunately, this type of tension is inspiring for me. I know Anne L’Huillier personally, and I got to know her as a kind, friendly and supportive person,” he said.
Gábor Szabó
It is a tradition of our institute to commemorate outstanding achievements in fields of science associated with ELI ALPS. In the afternoon, we inaugurated a new milestone in honour of the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physics, which was granted 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. Attosecond physics is one of the focus areas of ELI ALPS’ research profile. For us, the fact that the leading researchers in this field were awarded the Nobel Prize, and two of them, Ferenc Krausz and Anne L’Huillier, played a major role in the establishment of ELI ALPS, sends the message that attosecond science is a major discovery for mankind.
“Today, we celebrate the founders of attosecond physics with the inauguration of a new milestone. It is my sincere hope that we will soon be able to add more milestones to our timeline in recognition of new results in laser physics, which started with Albert Einstein in 1917. The reason for my optimism is that the talks we heard this morning confirmed my earlier conviction that we have entered a new era of science,” Professor Gábor Szabó said in his speech delivered on the occasion, adding that attophysics can help us achieve significant scientific results with promising practical applications. Our Managing Director admitted that two or three years ago he did not expect that in September 2023 we would inaugurate a milestone celebrating the opening of our institute, and in June 2024 we would carve in stone the names of the three researchers who won the Nobel Prize for attosecond physics.
Ferenc Krausz
“It’s a wonderful feeling to stand here and see my name on this milestone,” Anne L’Huillier said adding how surprised she was when she received the call from Stockholm on 3 October 2023. The Nobel Prize is awarded for discoveries that have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind. She felt that this recognition came a little too early, as attophysics had not yet had any practical applications that could be said to have made life easier for mankind. She asked the world’s scientific community, including the staff of the Szeged based laser centre, to produce results that would benefit mankind. The Nobel Laureate professor was impressed by what she saw during her laboratory tour at ELI ALPS. “The Szeged centre is a wonderful facility, it has all the conditions necessary for new discoveries to be made. I myself am part of the work at ELI ALPS, as the University of Lund was involved in the design of the SYLOS GHHG laser. In more than ten years of our collaboration, I have learned a lot from colleagues working here. I ask that we continue working together in the same spirit,” she said as a closing thought.
Katalin Varjú
“It is a great honour to be here. I am convinced that the three of us, the 2023 Nobel Laureates in Physics, represent a professional community, and the experts at the Szeged centre are part of this community. If the three of us had continued our research alone, there would have been no chance of winning the Nobel Prize,” Ferenc Krausz said in his speech marking the occasion. According to him, the strength of the professional community is best manifested by the building of ELI ALPS, which is not just a building, but a palace of science. It is thanks to the joint efforts of many people, the collaboration of the European attosecond community that this centre has come into being. Ferenc Krausz agreed with Anne L’Huillier in that their scientific recognition needs to be reinforced with more and more achievements.
“On behalf of the researchers and staff of ELI ALPS, we extend our heartfelt congratulations on your outstanding scientific achievements recognized with the Nobel Prize! It is a great honour for us to have you celebrate with us the inauguration of one of our research centre’s milestones,” Katalin Varjú, Science Director of ELI ALPS said in salutation to Ferenc Krausz and Anne L’Huillier.
To mark the special occasion, each researcher was presented with a unique gift, a Hungarian invention called Gömböc, which is the first known convex, homogeneous object to have just one stable and one unstable equilibrium points. The existence of the Gömböc was conjectured in 1995, but the proof of existence and experimental verification came more than a decade later, just like in the case of attosecond pulses.
These Gömböcs have unique serial numbers. The one presented to Anne L’Huillier carries the number 170, which pays homage to the first on target attosecond pulse characterization, achieved by the Lund group in 2004. The Gömböc presented to Ferenc Krausz carries the number 80. The Hungarian-born researcher generated 80 attosecond pulses in 2008. It was a feat which was recognized even with a Guinness World Records certificate.
According to our Science Director, the Gömböc is both complex and fascinating. It is a symbol of harmony and creativity. We hope that the Gömböc will remind these two researchers of their commitment to science and the profound impact they have had on the world.
After the ceremony, we asked Anne L’Huillier why she had been surprised to receive the Nobel Prize, a recognition that had been in the air for years. “It’s because we had not yet come up with applications that would make life easier for humankind. ELI ALPS could open a new chapter in this respect, offering a new perspective. This institute is also important for me because it offers physicists a unique research opportunity with its unique lasers and unprecedented beamlines. All in all, this facility is unrivalled in the world,” said Anne L’Huillier, who had mentored our Science Director Katalin Varjú and Group Leader Balázs Major in Lund. She currently has no Hungarian colleagues in Sweden, but her door is open.
“Whenever I come here, I always have an ‘Aha!’ experience. I get pleasantly overwhelmed when I see this palace. It makes me proud that this centre was built in Hungary, and that it is in good hands. Everyone can be sure that world-class research will be carried out here in the coming years and decades, which, in the long run, will make not only Hungary, but also Europe proud,” Ferenc Krausz said. He added that although attophysics started off in Europe, by today it has spread all over the world. This field of science is rapidly developing both in North America and Asia, where teams doing cutting-edge research are forming.
Highlights of our laser timeline
Our laser timeline commemorates the key figures and achievements in laser physics. The first milestone is a tribute to Albert Einstein, who in 1917 published the theory of stimulated emission in light–matter interactions, which is the fundamental principle behind laser technology. American physicist-engineer Theodore Maiman fired the first laser on 16 May 1960. A milestone commemorates the launch of the first Hungarian laser, which was built in 1963, and another one pays tribute to the 1971 Nobel Prize awarded to the Hungarian-born physicist Dénes Gábor (Dennis Gabor), the inventor of holography. Our institute is frequently visited by French professor Gérard Mourou, who shared the 2018 Nobel Prize with Donna Strickland for their method of generating high-intensity, ultrashort optical pulses.
The last milestone before this new one was unveiled in September 2023 to commemorate the formal handover of the Institute to science.
Photos: Gábor Balázs
Author: Zoltán Ötvös