Last year’s Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Pierre Agostini, Anne l’Huillier, and Ferenc Krausz, for discoveries that launched attosecond science and technology at the turn of the century, before there were any x-ray free electron lasers. Subsequent advances at SLAC as well as other labs around the world helped to establish the breadth and importance of research at the attosecond frontier, making the case for Nobel recognition of the foundational work. This illustrates how technological advances and fundamental discoveries feed on each other: advances in ultrafast lasers are quickly followed by fundamental discoveries in physics, which then motivate further advances in laser technology. This colloquium is an eyewitness account of that story from its beginnings four decades ago to the present. I’ll describe the science behind the Prize, and I’ll explain how x-ray lasers have become a central focus for the next chapter of the saga.

Reception preceding at 3pm in the Gant Light Court