Gérard Mourou: Nobel Lecture in Physics, 2018

our next speaker is Professor Geronimo who who is a French scientist and a pioneer in the field of laser physics he was born in June 1944 in Alda havilah in the French Alps a town probably best known for hosting the 1992 Winter Olympics at least until now Moreau started his career in physics at the University of Grenoble ALP getting his diploma in 1967 and moving on to first Quebec and then Paris to work on his doctoral thesis he received his doctorate from Pierre and Marie Curie University in Paris in 1973 Jacques who spent a large part of his career in the United States in particular at the laboratory from laser energetics at the University of Rochester New York were one of his doctoral students as we just heard was Donna Strickland together the pair device the chair pose amplification technique which today is at the core of most high powered laser facilities in the world in 1988 moo-hoo joined the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor where he founded the Center for ultra-fast optical science he returned to France in 2005 and became the director of the laboratory of light optics at the campus of Ecole Polytechnique in Palace or a post which he held on to 2008 moo-hoo is a visionary aiming to create lasers with unprecedented power he initiated the multi petawatt apollon laser project in France and coordinates the large European extreme light infrastructure le that will host even more powerful lasers in Romania Hungary and the Czech Republic he is currently also the fuel director of Isis the International Centre for cetera what and technology established in France in 2011 - among other things developed the field of laser based particle physics jacquimo who has been the recipient of many prestigious prizes but I dare say that this year's Nobel Prize must be the icing on the cake with that I'd like to invite professor moo-hoo to join me on stage to give a talk staking out the future of high intensity lasers professor move [Music] well thank you very much for coming friends colleagues former students and so on well it's always a dangerous act you know to act up behind Donna you know anyway I'm going to try Donna it's also a pleasure because there is many many of my students in the audience students or co-worker and for me it's very refreshing is like you know when when we had our group meetings you know at watch Esther at Michigan and so on anyway so I I'm going to tell you can be and can we blow this picture little bit bigger yes yes yes okay so I'm going ready to to talk about my patient my patient about extreme light so Donna gave you all the background how to build these high intensity lasers and so on you don't need much more than that okay and so but I'm going to tell you what you can do with that okay because it's true that it's only only recently but we had this phenomenal in intensity available and so there is many new discovery shall be made okay so that's my patient all right okay and so okay can maybe act okay I can I can i yeah so everything like Donna said everything and started from with Ted Memon you know in nineteen nineteen sixty and I'm sorry again the doctor yes and this one thing you know which really strikes me about about light it's a variety of things we can do okay and as after ash Kingdom sorry showed but what you can do you know first thing is maybe you can slow down at homes and it's a very very interesting phenomenon we have seen with tweezers and so on and this it doesn't okay so people you know used it intensively very successfully and trying to really use the light to decelerate atoms and that led to the field of quantum optics and called atoms and you have Steve Chu in the first row here which got a Nobel Prize with cohen-tannoudji and also Bill Phillips and so but LEDs this this flag but we cannot really slow down the atoms to very very small times velocity very important it's another way to say that's it's a way or so to make it atoms very cold and which temperatures you know which are I think the coldest temperature we can produce now okay now the other thing you can do and this is what is exciting okay you can do just the opposite you can accelerate particles and and you can accelerate particles like electrons for instance to use a speed of light or very close to the speed of light okay and and this led really to a new field which we call whole atavistic optics I will tell you why we relativistic optics in a minute we know that light is relativistic of the definition almost and and so that the fact that we can now accelerate particles to the speed of light then led of course now to a venomous field you know which deals with Alex accident of physics nuclear physics cosmology non your QED general relativity extra dimension physics you name it very large very large feeling ok so I don't have to go to talk about CPA we heard Donna st. you know of course we because we are going to need CPA of course to of course to accelerate this particle and so on so I so CPA you know we stretch the powers we amplify we compress it and is and finally in order to get their short pulses I'd like to say one thing you know because it's a very it was a completely novel concept at the time and because everybody has you seen was into dye lasers okay especially the guys at the lab at that time and and and here we came with with Donna with solid-state lasers and so it was it didn't grab the attention of many people except I will say a couple of one one for instant was Sunni Swanberg who just visit in my lab because he had hint that was very something special and also I had the visit of people from the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory Mike Campbell and so on magazine in the audience because he liked me they understood immediately that it was something important for for power increasing the power of lasers okay so now with this CPA technique what is fascinating is we can really produce very very high peak power and we are going to use this high power I will show you in a minute but just to give you a sense the power of the peak power okay if the light is in a paper in now it's a new beta watt range okay which is about a thousand times the total power of of the world Ward grid so global will do it okay but of course for femtosecond you know 10-15 seconds but nevertheless it extremely important and if you take now this power you know B's petawatt power and you focus it like Donna said over on a on a spot size which is a weapon for bright you cannot take off less than that so typically on me micrometers or so then you get a fabulous amount of energy density on a very small spot and this is of course you know lead is leading to absolutely new application just to give you an idea okay light like the first picture showed and outer ashing use short use and what fascinated by you know really deliver pressure and but when you are talking about pressure light at a peda what level when you focus light on a small submerged size you can really produce pressures which is correspond to about ten millions FL tower on the top of your finger so it is the largest pressure that you can produce enough is but with light with photons this is amazing so now this is really the evolutions of intensity as a function of years okay from 1960 from the 1960 where may man invented the laser and the first five five lesson let's first ten years new technique improved the power and Mark you switching more locking and then the the intensity plateaued he plateaued because like Donna said you know you are damaging you if you go higher you are damaging you your your laser inside you know you you you damage I'm putting this nice big track you know in your your solid-state amplifier and you of course makes you advisor of very unhappy right Donna and hardware yeah so anyway so in order to prevent Donna making mistake I said well if you know that's not the way to do it let's do it this way okay let's try it let's invent so CPA okay so she would learn try damage word anymore okay so so we we did she build it and the CPA and then we we cool really now we are not limited by by the breakdowns of material loss and but and we could easily climb up now the intensities and now I mean since we 85 when we did it the intensity have to say I think reason obviously okay eight or nine orders of magnitude okay and it going to go further up okay with with lasers like up alone but is being built lasers which which is part of the Eloi infrastructures you know and Gary and and home mania and and and crag and so on so he's going up and as we are going up you know of course we are traversing new regimes of physics so the first one you know we and Donna said it you know we we started to really observe multiphoton ionization differently and so on and and and and observe what she was saying I know I saw we climbed up with this as we climb up with the intensity when we go into relativistic optics why relativistic optics because for the first times you know when you have when you can see something this means that you have been you have electrons with which are agitated and because they are agitated they are really move producing light which are coming and spiking your eyes okay so but in a case of when you are passing 10 to be 18 watt per square centimeter or so then what happened is now the electrons in your atoms move by a large amount and move at the speed of light so the electrons not to light but the electrons are really moving at the speed of light so so that's what's very interesting regimes you know which leads to a lot of fact and and so on so now of course if you are pushing this is what we are trying to do now if you are pushing the intensity up you know like we are trying to do with Apollo in the eye and so on the end you you go into the you travel atavistic regime and this time it is because not only the electrons don't can be moved at the speed of light but also the protons protons which are massives are 2,000 times the the mass of the electron so the Imam as if but a 10 to the 25 or so what Pascrell centimeters they move the speed of light and that's going to be very important when finally if we push even the intensity even higher and I won't say exactly how we're going to do that Jonathan we are indeed in the audience and can we can talk about it but so we go into this regime where light interact with vacuum okay like my friend position says we are boiling the vacuum okay we are really separating the particles real particles and the article virtual particle in vacuum and this is what we can do and at this regime which is ten to the twenty eight twenty to twenty nine what Pascal Santa materials okay and basically what we do is we materialize the value vacuum okay anyway so moving right along okay again so now just one thing if we go back to the regime's you know a ten to fourteen and so on you know then we can really use this time to Saigon lasers so we don't add for instance to two micro machines to remove to a blade material very very precisely the reason is femtosecond laser are so good for that is because if you are using for me number continuous laser and you're shining the continuous lasers on the on the on a target then you are going finally to heat to all volumes of the targets so you cannot really micro machine with that now if you are using pulses which are much shorter nanosecond me nanosecond layton nanosecond pulses which is for us is infinity you know it's very long but you do better be because of course the heat doesn't have the time to pop again between between before the block is it's it's molten and and then you have the femtosecond laser where you come with a very very short pulse and you deposit the energy and the the temperature I mean the hate doesn't have the time to propagate and you make this very nice holes and it's a very very precise way to really oblate materials and this gives you some idea you know of what we could do what you can do in fact really easily now is really what widely known was he highly done everywhere and you can see that we can really make holes and so on very precisely there is no collateral damage and Owens very clean and very small okay you see what we have feature of size which is less than a micrometers you know in in size and no damages so of course now one beautiful way to use this with this this laser is to is to do ice surgery because after all eyes you know is some magical tissue and also is not the kind of things where you have to be accurate with ice and so we thought about that in fact we thought because we had with little mishap happening in my lab and this is one of one of my students within the audience you know God arranged the laser cutter laser in his eyes and and immediately you know for free to the students you know to the hospital and they made the met after largest who is also here on Kurt and and so honkers look at the detail do eyes both are here and say wow this is very strange and yes you got hit by the laser but it's strange and so did you say what what is strange well it's strange because the damage on your retina is perfect so that immediately you know of course you know we had the University of Michigan you know excited about it they put some money in it and and and then we add but started the field of femtosecond laser which is a very very important field ok so this is just to give you an idea what we can do you know on on the on the cornea we can use it all kinds of things no we can on enough technology and so it was very exciting in fact so if you are I'm just show here if you have 50 picosecond laser which is long for us ok and if you have 300 10 toes are gone you can you see we can really create this flap you know very very nicely you know and and this is being done you know now as I saw also a few few of the largest here in the audience and it's great so now I I had I had a movie showing this creation of a flap but I have to say that and some cup after some comments people say well if you show this this this movie maybe some people are not going to stand it you know for it because it's so I'm I'm not going to show it okay and I will save some time but anyway if you want really to talk about that here you have specialist at least we at least we a specialist you know on this thing here okay now let's go back to my to my my hot nap here and so as I said you so we were here for a short while and now we are climbing up as I said we are in this area right now and what's exciting here you know one we are which was like this right yeah when we when you are in this area of of you know 10 to the 20 and 25 weeks ago when you are shining the laser over a very small size I mean sports sports eyes like donna said wavelength of light then you are producing with amongest intensities and you are producing particles you know of any kind of particles any kind of radiations with very large with energy okay very freely okay it's amazing and so this is a we call a universal source of eye energy particle and radiations and this and this type of course of work is being done at Lund you know not there if one in Sweden anyway and and if you are interested people here okay so now what we are what we want to do now is we are producing we this was an idea from Tajima and Dowson tashirojima a very good friend of mine of a lot of people also and the idea is this ID in 1979 he said well you know looking at ducks or whatever on the lake you know looking at surf surfer and so on he said well maybe we should use the same effect that is being used by surfer in order really to get particles moving so they they they really wrote this very nice paper but of course is 1979 so it's before 1985 so I didn't know about this effect you know and Toshi didn't know about the CPA okay so but fortunately we had scientists at an array of Naval Research Lab who we really were able ready to solve the potential to put the two concepts CPA and laser Wakefield accelerations you know together in order to accelerate particles and this is what is going on now in the many many laboratories in the world you have lasers here and you shine the laser on this gas jet and and you're polishing a plasma you know which is a plasma is a kind of a soup of electrons and and and protons and so on and you are creating this wave this plasma waves where the electrons are going to be trapped and dragged at the speed of light you know by this wave okay so this now it is really we were talking last night with Olga this is ready is the future for electron accelerations and for is because we have example problems in in high-energy physics there are problems because you have to build this huge accelerators here you have the CERN accelerator or LHC 27 kilometer in confluence yeah you know and about 70 meters underground so it is really of course it cost enormous amount of in earth of of money and now because for the the next step the next next Collider is going to be even bigger okay and will cost in an affordable amount of money so really it is very important really to come to come and and with the new technology and you think that if you are ready we placing the technology use right now in this in this case for instance which is you were using high def we can see you had microwave and so on where you have the gradients is of the order of less than 100 meters Android I'm sorry Android MeV per meters that's what is on weiu reverbs 2070 no matter but if you now are using this novel techniques so josh is Tajima idea to accelerate particles then you could ready fit you know a CERN in principle okay turn on a football field okay so this is pretty good okay but you know of course we like with toshi to look ahead all the time and so some people you know in the agency's a difficulty to see that you know and and but anyway this way we are okay and so we like to look ahead and so right now let me tell you but we can produce now something like devices GeV devices a centimeter of size okay now we can produce up to 5 GeV but 5 GV is is something like 10 centimeter in lab okay and yes we could very maybe put turn on the football field but could we - but much better than that and right now the reason is yes yes we cool in fact I'm not putting your leg here okay i weak already in fact next the accelerator kind of TeV accelerator on the fingertip and and by by doing what okay instead of using gas which has which has a very low density of electrons then we have to use black light to use solid solid and so you have six order of magnitude larger amount of electrons okay because we are working also with gas at low low density gas and and then but you say wow but I mean now light won't be able to propagate through the solid at this very high intensity and so so okay fine but if we can if we can really develop high I intensity x-ray now so but is instead of visit working in a visible work in the x-ray regime then with the x-rays high intensity can penetrate into into the salad and to produce this Wakefield this is exactly what we are doing right now you know it might be at at the ecole polytechnique and in collaboration with of course with tashirojima irvine and also with some people from the eli okay because we think Haley this is really maybe the future trying to work with laser Wakefield accelerations in in the high-energy x-ray regime so we we have we have ways to do that I don't have the time to show it but really I think it is really new new avenue to do that now yeah I just a quick reminder that the ISIS twee phenomenal phenomenal facilities which are being built by the European Union and which are really in in Czech Republic in anger and in Romania well you have absolutely beautiful facilities facility we are not well really doing different things don't do three times or something of course and the the end and it's absolutely fabulous to have in few years you know we will have them working and welcoming large amount of users and so an Arai for instance is very close to get to the ten Peter what objective now now you know what is this a big application coming back to to societal applications there's a very important applications if you can produce beams of particles let's suppose that you can put we can really produce beams of protons well you know protons therapy per exam for cancer and so on is really the the the really the therapy of choice okay because the protons not like other radiation of particles they don't burn the tissue between bit between really the the skin and the tumors you can really address tumors almost you know uniquely so you can deposit your proton exactly in a tumor now also what is nice about having these high intensity lasers is you can make particles and these particles you know can be had your nucleotides and and so on and you can use them you know to implant these particles into into the near the tumor or in the tumor of of the patient also you can use these these these I do isotopes and so on but you know which in order to do all kind of diagnostics and so on so this this CPA I mean CPA high intensity or extremely light in the extremely extreme light intense intensity or lasers you know are very very used but will be very useful in in in medical world now just also another egg applications but this is dreaming what I'd like to do him anyway so I did that all my life and made my made my living with that and so anyway so just one one really big problem we have and this also together with Toshi while working on it and by the way we're not working because it's easy what's going to we're working on it because it's difficult okay and what we want her to do is to transmute transmute nuclear waste because we have all nuclear energy it may be the best candidate for the future but you are still you are still you know left with a lot of his junk dangerous junk and and that's reason Toshi you invented the terms now toilet science it's time to do toilets and it's time to to clean up what we have produced you know producing energy and so on for our living and so and so the idea now it was is is we have to find ways okay to mitigate you know this nuclear waste in one way will be maybe to transmute this this this nuclear waste into a new new new form of atoms which are not which doesn't don't have this problem of radioactivity and so what you have to do is to change the making of the nucleus okay of so far if you have a I if you have a nucleus atoms a okay and you have a isotope a and which is maybe lighter active for a long time so that takes me example of technician for instance and which can be radioactive for 100,000 of years then if you can if you can really large a a neutrons because now we have freedom we know we know that we can produce any kind of particles you know including neutrons we can produce neutrons you know in in this in nucleus when you are changing the isotope a into an isotope B but this time it can have ready now radioactivity time wheel is of the order of seconds of course this is most favorable case but so we will I try to extend the concept you know to to of course so nuclear waste which are really polluting our life right now so and so by the way sometime you have you're lucky and this isotope B becomes isotope C and it's it's stable so it doesn't emit anything so in conclusion for me is extreme light is capable of generating the largest field the largest accelerations so largest temperature and the larger pressure just with flight is amazing and it carries the best hope and opportunity for the future of science and technology so thank you very much and I would like to add that you know we are doing this very rich field right now a field of extreme light but I think the best is yet to come thank you very much [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] so this concludes the physics lectures for this year's Nobel Prize to 2018 I would like to extend my profound thanks again to three eminent speakers dr. SC arvind ahktar Donna Strickland and dr. moo-hoo for wonderful talks and having said that I would finally like to invite on the Bell laureates Donna Strickland and Yahoo to come up on stage with me so that you may congratulate them again to this year's prize so please [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music]

Channel: Nobel Prize

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Length: 41min 4sec (2464 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 08 2018