Grad Talk: Light-matter interaction in atomic/molecular systems

Abstract: With the 2023 Nobel prize in physics being awarded to Agostini, Krausz and L’Huillier, attosecond
physics has been thrust into the spotlight. Attosecond physics is the study of microscopic phenomena
on the scale of atoms/molecules. The field gets it’s name from the time scale on which dynamics
occurs at this level, which can be as fast as a few attoseconds for electrons (1 as = 10−18 s). With the
rapid evolution of lasers since their conception in 1960, the ability to measure electronic dynamics
was recently made possible with the creation of attosecond pulses in the early 2000s, which inspired
the choice of recipients for the 2023 Nobel prize in physics and lead to the creation of a new field -
attosecond physics. In my talk I will present the history of the field and give an introduction into
the work I perform which aims to simulate electronic dynamics in atoms.