Celebrating attosecond science, physics tournament focuses on fun

The 2023 Nobel Prize For Physics was shared by three scientists who pioneered the use of ultrashort, attosecond laser pulses for studying the behaviour electrons in matter.

In this episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast, I chat with three people involved with the IOPP-ZJU International Symposium on Progress in Attosecond Science. The event will be held on 23 May at China’s Zhejiang University and can also be attended online via Zoom. It is organized by IOP Publishing (which brings you Physics World) and Zhejiang University.

Joining me in a lively discussion of attosecond science are Haiqing Lin of Zhejiang University, Caterina Vozzi of Italy’s Institute for Photonics and Nanotechnologies and David Gevaux of the IOPP journal Reports on Progress in Physics, which is supporting the symposium.

This week’s episode also features an interview with Anthony Quinlan, who was a two-time contestant in the PLANCKS international theoretical physics competition for students. He now helps organize the event, the finals of which will be held in Dublin next week.

Quinlan chats with Physics World’s Katherine Skipper about competition, which involves teams of undergraduate and masters’ students solving “fun” physics problems. Quinlan explains that contestants are encouraged to come up with creative solutions – which sometimes leads to unexpected paths to the correct answer.