“It is very difficult to predict the future of this field”

Distinguished with the 15th Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Basic Sciences, physicist Anne L’Huillier explains the discovery of high-order harmonic generation by exposing atoms to an intense laser field, producing ultrashort light pulses in the attosecond range. She highlights its application for observing electron motion and its growing impact on atomic physics, molecular chemistry, condensed matter, and industries such as semiconductors.

The BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Basic Sciences goes in this fifteenth edition to Anne L’Huillier (Lund University, Sweden), Paul Corkum (University of Ottawa, Canada) and Ferenc Krausz (Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics, Germany), the three pioneers of “attosecond physics” or “attophysics” whose work has made it possible to observe subatomic processes unfolding over the shortest time scale captured by science.