The Nobel laureates have demonstrated a way to create extremely short flashes of light, which can be used to discern the rapid progression of electrons moving or changing their energy.

We humans don't have time to perceive rapid events. It's like a film made up of individual still images, but we perceive it as a continuous flow. Therefore, if we want to investigate really short events, we need a special technique. In the case of electrons, changes often occur on scales of a few tens of attoseconds. An attosecond is so short that there are as many such events in one second as there are seconds in the age of the entire universe.

"This year's prize is linked to Fysikum. We would therefore like to congratulate Professor Eva Lindroth, who has been a long-term close collaborator of Anna L'Hullier in the field of this year's Nobel Prize and has contributed theoretical expertise," says Jan Conrad, Head of the Department of Physics.

"When we can resolve several steps in the process both in terms of energy and time, there is a very interesting interplay where we can get new insights into quantum mechanical problems. In chemical reactions, it is common for some electrons to move just before the actual chemical reaction takes place,  which is when the atomic nuclei change position. A long-term dream would be that we can influence this dynamics. In this way, we could control the results of various chemical reactions," says Eva Lindroth, Professor of Theoretical Atomic Physics.

More information

The Nobel Prize in Physics 2023: Experiments with light capture the shortest of moments

About Professor Eva Lindroth, Fysikum

Timing many-body effects in small quantum systems (The Swedish Research Council)

Quantum mechanical phenomena in real time (Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation)

Research Group: Atomic many-body theory for structure and dynamics

Fysikum's educations and courses in Physics