Pierre Agostini (; born 23 July 1941) is a French experimental physicist and

Emeritus ''Emeritus'' (; female: ''emerita'') is an adjective used to designate a retired chair, professor, pastor, bishop, pope, director, president, prime minister, rabbi, emperor, or other person who has been "permitted to retain as an honorary title ...

professor at the Ohio State University, known for his pioneering work in strong-field laser physics and attosecond science. He is especially known for the observation of

above-threshold ionization In atomic, molecular, and optical physics, above-threshold ionization (ATI) is a multi-photon effect where an atom is ionized with more than the energetically required number of photons. It was first observed in 1979. Photoelectrons In the c ...

and the invention of the

reconstruction of attosecond beating by interference of two-photon transitions Reconstruction of attosecond beating by interference of two-photon transitions, more commonly known as RABBITT or RABBIT for short, is a widely used technique for obtaining the relative phase and amplitude of attosecond pulses. This technique involv ...

(RABBITT) technique for characterization of

attosecond An attosecond (symbol as) is a unit of time in the International System of Units (SI) equal to 1×10−18 of a second (one quintillionth of a second). For comparison, an attosecond is to a second what a second is to about 31.71 billion years.

light pulses. He was jointly awarded the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physics.

Education and career

Pierre Agostini was born in Tunis, in the

French protectorate of Tunisia The French protectorate of Tunisia (french: Protectorat français de Tunisie; ar, الحماية الفرنسية في تونس '), commonly referred to as simply French Tunisia, was established in 1881, during the French colonial Empire era, ...

, in 1941. He obtained his ''

baccalauréat The ''baccalauréat'' (; ), often known in France colloquially as the ''bac'', is a French national academic qualification that students can obtain at the completion of their secondary education (at the end of the ''lycée'') by meeting certain ...

'' at the

Prytanée national militaire The Prytanée national militaire is a French military school managed by the French military, offering regular secondary education as well as special preparatory classes, equivalent in level to the first years of university, for students who wish ...

school in 1959 in La Flèche, France. Agostini studied physics at Aix-Marseille University, where he subsequently received a B.Ed. degree (''licence d'enseignement'') in physics in 1961, and a M.A.S. degree (''diplôme d'études approfondies'') in 1962. In 1968 he completed a doctoral degree there, on multilayer dielectric filters for the ultraviolet, titled ''Appareillage permettant la réalisation de filtres multidiélectriques UV : Étude des couches Sb₂O₃''. After his doctorate, he became a researcher at

CEA Saclay The CEA Paris-Saclay (formerly CEA Saclay) center is one of nine centers belonging to the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA). The Saclay site hosts the administrative headquarters of the CEA. Historically, it was the hea ...

in 1969 and stayed there until 2002. During this time, Agostini worked in the lab of Gérard Mainfray and Claude Manus, where he researched on multiphoton ionization using the powerful lasers there. They are the first to observe

in 1979 in xenon gas. In 2001, Agostini and his team at CEA Saclay along with Harm Geert Muller at the Dutch Foundation for Fundamental Research on Matter (FOM), using an advanced laser at the , managed to create a train of pulses each 250

attoseconds An attosecond (symbol as) is a unit of time in the International System of Units (SI) equal to 1×10−18 of a second (one Names of large numbers, quintillionth of a second). For comparison, an attosecond is to a second what a second is to about 3 ...

in duration. By recombining the ultrashort ultraviolet pulses with the original infrared light they created an interference effect that allowed him to characterize the length and repetition rate of the pulses. Agostini was a visiting scientist at the Brookhaven National Laboratory in the U.S. state of

New York New York most commonly refers to: * New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York * New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States New York may also refer to: Film and television * '' ...

between 2002 and 2004, where he worked in Louis F. DiMauro's group. He became professor of physics at the Ohio State University (OSU) in 2005 and ran a laboratory jointly with Louis F. DiMauro who moved a year earlier to OSU. Agostini became Emeritus professor at OSU in 2018.

Honors and awards

Agostini received the Gustave Ribaud prize in 1995 from the

French Academy of Sciences The French Academy of Sciences (French: ''Académie des sciences'') is a learned society, founded in 1666 by Louis XIV of France, Louis XIV at the suggestion of Jean-Baptiste Colbert, to encourage and protect the spirit of French Scientific me ...

. In 2003, he received the

Gay-Lussac–Humboldt Prize The Gay-Lussac–Humboldt Prize is German–French science prize. It was created in 1981 by French President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing and German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt based on the recommendation of the German and French research ministries. ...

and the Joop Los fellowship from the Dutch Foundation for Fundamental Research on Matter (FOM), he also received the

William F. Meggers Award in Spectroscopy The William F. Meggers Award has been awarded annually since 1970 by the Optical Society (originally called the Optical Society of America) for outstanding contributions to spectroscopy. Recipients Source: See also * List of physics awards Thi ...

in 2007 from the Optical Society of America (OSA), and is a Humboldt Fellow. He was elected a Fellow of OSA in 2008 “for leadership in the development of innovative experiments providing major insights into the dynamics of the nonlinear response of atoms and molecules submitted to strong infrared laser pulses.” In 2023, he received the Nobel Prize in Physics for "for experimental methods that generate attosecond pulses of light for the study of electron dynamics in matter" along with Anne L'Huillier and Ferenc Krausz.

References

External links

Homepage at The Ohio State University
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Agostini, Pierre Aix-Marseille University alumni Living people Nobel laureates in Physics Ohio State University faculty 20th-century French physicists 21st-century French physicists People from Tunis Experimental physicists Fellows of Optica (society) Optical physicists 1941 births French Nobel laureates