On Oct. 2, 2018, The Nobel Foundation announced that Donna Strickland had was awarded a share of the Nobel Prize in Physics ‘for inventions in the field of laser physics and for the method of generating high-intensity, ultra-short optical pulses.‘

The sharp beams of laser light have given us new opportunities for deepening our knowledge about the world and shaping it. In 1985, Gérard Mourou and Donna Strickland succeeded in creating ultrashort high-intensity laser pulses without destroying the amplifying material.

First they stretched the laser pulses in time to reduce their peak power, then amplified them, and finally compressed them. The intensity of the pulse then increases dramatically. Chirped pulse amplification has many uses, including corrective eye surgeries.