Dr. Paul Corkum 2025 APS Medal: Transcript
[Music starts]
[On screen text] It's rare that you have a chance to find something universal in matter.
[On screen text] I was excited for day after day after day with this.
[On screen text] I'd wake up in the morning, I'd be excited.
[On screen text] I just think wow isn't this neat.
[On screen text] Paul Corkum 2025 APS Medal
[On screen text] So if you take a second, and you divide it into a million pieces
[On screen text] you have a microsecond.
[On screen text] So a million times a million times a million pieces that's an attosecond.
[On screen text] An attosecond is to a second as a second is to the age of the universe.
[On screen text] So it's amazing when you think about it.
[On screen text] Think about how much different the world is now compared to
[On screen text] the time of the Big Bang.
[On screen text] Yeah, I mean that's what you say, so what it can't have anything to do with our real life.
[On screen text] Our real life is the second life, but of course all matter is held together with electrons,
[On screen text] and so really the world of electrons is the world of attoseconds,
[On screen text] and the world of us is the world of seconds right.
[On screen text] But it's there and it's important to us because it underlies just about everything.
[On screen text] It's about everything.
[On screen text] I grew up close to the water, and my father he took me on the boat
[On screen text] so I was around the boats a lot when I was really young
[On screen text] and so I liked water.
[On screen text] Many things I think that you look at in water waves can move over into light waves.
[On screen text] I found my niche in science. I joined a group here at the National Research Council.
[On screen text] Trying to make shorter flashes of laser light.
[On screen text] Most laser people are afraid to think about atoms, molecules and solids.
[On screen text] They're really into optics.
[On screen text] And there are people of course who think about atoms, molecules and solids,
[On screen text] but they didn't know much about lasers, and they were maybe a little afraid
[On screen text] to think of lasers and so I thought, ah there's my place right there in the middle.
[On screen text] And so I tried to understand intense light interacting with atoms, molecules and solids.
[On screen text] And it's from that that the attoseconds grow.
[On screen text] There is no such thing as an attosecond laser.
[On screen text] The attosecond laser that you think of is really a conventional laser that we
[On screen text] can control really well. We're really good at conventional lasers
[On screen text] interacting with an atom, a molecule, a solid, whatever it is, often atoms.
[On screen text] And then it's through that interaction that we create the attosecond pulse.
[On screen text] In 1988, Paul predicted that using an attosecond pulse of light we could better observe the dynamics of electrons.
[On screen text] Yeah, you could think of it like a flash of light like you have in your flash camera,
[On screen text] and so the camera might be open for a while but you illuminate the face
[On screen text] just for a short time and it stops the motion, and things like that.
[On screen text] So, this is the fastest thing that we as humans can control.
[On screen text] It's not really a camera that you take it with anymore,
[On screen text] but something the equivalent to a camera
[On screen text] and so I'm going to illuminate something with an attosecond, which is again is amazing
[On screen text] isn't it. It's really neat.
[On screen text] In 1993, I published a paper saying electrons coming back and colliding
[On screen text] talking about really the way we look at it now, and almost immediately that I knew
[On screen text] that you could make attoseconds and I began to talk about how you make them,
[On screen text] how you'd measure them. All of a sudden, I'd go to conferences and people
[On screen text] would be around me, swarming around. It was the first time I'd had such a thing
[On screen text] and it was very exciting. I think any new advance in technology opens up
[On screen text] potential doors there's lots of smart people around so lots of people
[On screen text] come out with new ideas that you couldn't have done before because the technology
[On screen text] wasn't there, but now the technology is there.
[On screen text] The most important thing I think from attoseconds is not measuring something fast.
[On screen text] I think it's really important that this is a way, a universal response of matter to
[On screen text] intense light, and so I think in some ways that's even more important
[On screen text] than any 1 measurement that you can make with something faster.
[On screen text] that you found something universal responsive matter.
[On screen text] I mean I go back to 1993 when I first came up with the idea,
[On screen text] and I mean I didn't expect it to go quite so far.
[On screen text] You found a new idea that nobody has ever had and you can see that it will remain
[On screen text] powerful as further you look down in the field. No matter what, it won't go away.
[On screen text] I look at it as fun and problems and puzzles and ideas that might have a real impact.
[On screen text] I'm very proud of what I've accomplished.
[On screen text] I would say follow your interest. Follow something you think you have a chance of
[On screen text] solving. That's where you're going to have the best ideas right, because
[On screen text] you're going to be thinking about it all the time.
[On screen: video footage credit © APS]
[On screen: official signature, National Research Council Canada / Conseil national de recherches Canada]
[On screen: Government of Canada Wordmark]