Konwersatorium im. J.Pniewskiego i L.Infelda
sala 0.03, ul. Pasteura 5
2018-10-15 (16:30) 
Prof. Czesław Radzewicz and dr hab. Katarzyna Krajewska (Faculty of Physics, University of Warsaw)
Nobel Prize in Physics 2018: Towards the shortest and the most intense laser pulses
Nobel Prize in Physics 2018 has been awarded for groundbreaking inventions in the field of laser physics; one of them being the Chirped Pulse Amplification (CPA). The technique has been invented by Donna Strickland and her then PhD advisor Gérard Mourou, and published in Strickland’s first research paper (D. Strickland and G. Mourou, Opt. Commun. 56 (1985) 219). It has enabled a new generation of tabletop lasers that produce very short pulses of intense light. Such light interacts with matter in nonlinear ways, which has opened new physical regimes of experimental and theoretical explorations. Specifically, high-order harmonic generation has been discovered, leading recently to the development of attoscience. Another spectacular application of the CPA-based systems is the ability to directly accelerate charged particles by means of laser light. These and other physical examples of strong laser light applications will be discussed, none of which would be possible without the invention of the CPA.