2 November 2023 Thu 4 pm

Exploring the ultimate limits has always been one of the most important quests in physics. Insights obtained at such limits had often helped revising existing theories and/or producing new theories. Over the course of more than one century, human had gradually improved the speed at which observation can take place. In the 1880s, observations as fast as 2 milliseconds (ms) were captured. Today, the fastest observation could take place at the order of tens of attoseconds (1 as = 10-18 s) which is about 15 orders of magnitude faster than before. The Nobel prize in Physics this year was given to scientists whose contributions have served as a foundation for the development and advancement of attosecond physics, particularly the generation of attosecond pulses. In this talk, we will briefly discuss the historical background leading to such development. Then we will discuss few key contributions from the Nobel laureates. Next, the impact of such works on the various research fields are presented. One noteworthy example is the use of attosecond pulses to probe attosecond delay in photoemission process, one that was thought by quantum mechanics to be instantaneous. Finally, current research and potential applications are briefly discussed.

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