Mentoring of “Tomorrow, an electric world”
The celebration of 250th André-Marie Ampère’s birthday is honored to have an exceptional godmother and godfathers : Anne L’Huillier, Alain Aspect and Gérard Mourou, Nobel Prize winners in Physics in 2023, 2022 and 2018 respectively.
Anne L’Huillier, a Franco-Swedish physicist, has developed methods for producing ultra-short laser pulses, on the order of attoseconds (one billionth of one billionth of a second), These methods enable her to image movement of electrons in atoms and molecules. Joint winner of the 2023 Nobel Prize with Pierre Agostini and Ferenc Krausz, Anne L’Huillier is the second French woman to win the Nobel Prize in Physics after Marie Curie in 1903.
Alain Aspect, a French physicist, conceived and conducted fundamental experiments in physics that laid the foundations of quantum entanglement, a key element of quantum technologies. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2022 jointly with John Clauser and Anton Zeilinger. Alain Aspect notably settled the longstanding debate between Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr on the foundations of quantum mechanics, ultimately siding with the latter.
Gérard Mourou, a French physicist, developed the CPS (chirped pulse amplification) technique for amplifying laser radiation. This innovation has enabled the creation of extremely short laser pulses, of the order of a femtosecond (one quadrillionth of a second), revolutionising imaging and analysis techniques on unprecedented time scales. Joint winner of the 2018 Nobel Prize in Physics with Donna Strickland, Gérard Mourou has paved the way for numerous applications in medicine, physics and engineering.
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