Reflections from a Nobel winner: Scientists need time to make discoveries

Reflections from a Nobel winner: Scientists need time to make discoveries

5 years ago
Anonymous $L9wC17otzH

https://phys.org/news/2019-01-nobel-winner-scientists-discoveries.html

Gérard Mourou, my co-recipient of the Nobel Prize, and I developed CPA in the mid-1980s. It all started when he wondered if we could increase laser intensity by orders of magnitude —or by factors of a thousand. He was my doctoral supervisor at the University of Rochester back then. Mourou suggested stretching an ultrashort pulse of light of low energy, amplifying it and then compressing it. As the graduate student, I had to handle the details.

A goal to revolutionize laser physics