Nobelpreisvortrag
Prof. Dr. Christoph Lienau
(Institut für Physik, Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg)

Ultrafast and Ultrasmall: This year’s Nobel Prize in Physics

Earlier this year, Pierre Agostini, Ferencz Krausz and Anne L'Huillier have been awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics. They have developed experimental methods that enable the creation of flashes of light with attosecond duration. An attosecond is so short that there are as many in one second as there have been seconds since the birth of the universe. Such pulses can be used to take movies of the motion of electrons in atoms, molecules and solids. Since this is already the second Nobel Prize in physics that has been given to ultrafast science during the past five years, the lecture will give a basic introduction into the exciting new methods that have been developed in this field. I will try to take you on a short journey into the wonderful and exciting world of electrons and will explain some perspectives that result from the work of the Nobel Prize winners. Finally, I want to point out the relevance of this work for currently ongoing research in North West Germany.