Pierre Agostini facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Pierre Agostini
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Agostini in 2023
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| Born | 23 July 1941 Tunis, French Tunisia
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| Alma mater | Aix-Marseille University (BEd, MAS, PhD) |
| Known for | Above-threshold ionization RABBITT |
| Awards | Gay-Lussac–Humboldt Prize (2003) William F. Meggers Award (2007) Nobel Prize in Physics (2023) |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Attosecond physics |
| Institutions | CEA Saclay Ohio State University |
| Thesis | Appareillage permettant la réalisation de filtres multidiélectriques UV: Étude des couches Sb2O3 cryolithe (1967) |
Pierre Agostini (born 23 July 1941) is a French experimental physicist. He is an emeritus professor at the Ohio State University in the United States. He is famous for his important work with powerful lasers and super-fast light pulses. He helped create the field of attosecond science. In 2023, he won the Nobel Prize in Physics for his discoveries.
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Early Life and Education
Pierre Agostini was born in Tunis, which was then part of French Tunisia, in 1941. He finished high school at the Prytanée national militaire school in France in 1959.
He studied physics at Aix-Marseille University in France. He earned his first degree in physics in 1961. He then got a master's degree in 1962. In 1968, he completed his PhD there. His research was about special filters for ultraviolet light.
Career and Discoveries
After getting his PhD, Agostini started working as a researcher. He joined CEA Paris-Saclay in France in 1969. He worked there for over 30 years, until 2002.
Studying Light and Electrons
At CEA Saclay, Agostini worked with strong lasers. He studied how light interacts with atoms. In 1979, he and his team made an important discovery. They were the first to observe something called "above-threshold ionization." This happens when an electron in an atom absorbs more energy from light than it needs to escape. It's like giving a ball an extra push after it's already left the ground.
Creating Attosecond Pulses
In 2001, Agostini and his team made another big breakthrough. They worked with scientists from the Dutch Foundation for Fundamental Research on Matter. They used a special laser to create extremely short bursts of light. These bursts were only 250 attoseconds long.
To understand how short an attosecond is, imagine this: one attosecond is to one second as one second is to the age of the universe! These super-fast light pulses are called "attosecond pulses."
Agostini's team also found a way to measure these tiny pulses. They used a method called RABBITT. This stands for "reconstruction of attosecond beating by interference of two-photon transitions." It allowed them to figure out how long the pulses were and how often they repeated. This was a huge step for studying how electrons move inside atoms.
Working in the United States
From 2002 to 2004, Agostini was a visiting scientist. He worked at the Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York, USA. In 2005, he became a physics professor at the Ohio State University (OSU). He ran a lab there with another scientist, Louis F. DiMauro. Agostini became an emeritus professor at OSU in 2018.
Awards and Recognition
Pierre Agostini has received many awards for his scientific work.
- In 1995, he received the Gustave Ribaud prize.
- In 2003, he was awarded the Gay-Lussac–Humboldt Prize.
- In 2007, he received the William F. Meggers Award in Spectroscopy.
- In 2008, he was made a Fellow of the Optical Society of America. This was for his leadership in experiments that helped us understand how atoms and molecules react to strong laser light.
In 2023, Pierre Agostini was jointly awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics. He shared the prize with Anne L'Huillier and Ferenc Krausz. They received the award for their "experimental methods that generate attosecond pulses of light for the study of electron dynamics in matter." Their work helps scientists see and understand the incredibly fast movements of electrons.
