The Nobel Prize in Physics 2023 has been awarded to Pierre Agostini, Ferenc Krausz and Anne L’Huillier „for experimental methods that generate attosecond pulses of light for the study of electron dynamics in matter“.

Attosecond light pulses are produced via an extremely nonlinear optical process dubbed „High-order Harmonic Generation“ (HHG) and give access to the electron time scale in matter.

In this talk, I will present the discovery of this intriguing optical process and a wide range of applications of these ultrashort light transients ranging from the observation of characteristic temporal delays in photoemission to the possibility of driving a faster electronics and potentially control chemical reactions at the electron time scale (attochemistry).