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Paul B. Corkum, a pioneer in the field of experimental attosecond science, began his career as a theoretical physicist. Although it might seem like the story of how he switched to experimental work after arduously working to attain a Ph.D. in theory would be intriguing, “it’s not so glamorous,” he says. “I was looking for a job.”
The tale of how he landed a job as an experimentalist, however, is certainly noteworthy. While in graduate school at Lehigh University, in Bethlehem, Pa., Corkum owned a car that “started to spew some smoke,” he says. His wife wanted to replace it, but Corkum, then a cash-strapped student, thought otherwise. “I got a book, and I took the whole car apart and changed all kinds of things,” he says.
In the end, he put the car back together successfully, and when Corkum was later interviewing for a research position with the National Research Council (NRC) of Canada, he was asked why he thought he could be an experimentalist. “I told them, ‘No problem. I rebuilt my car from the bottom to the top,’ ” he recalls. “And it worked. I got the job.”
Since that time, Corkum, 66, has focused his research efforts on the interaction of intense laser pulses with matter. He has made a number of major contributions to the fields of molecular optics and X-ray laser research. But it was his 1993 publication of a comprehensive theory to describe high harmonic generation (Phys. Rev. Lett. 1993, 71, 1994) that has “turned out to have bigger impact than I could have imagined,” Corkum says.
The theory describes the so-called recollision electron—an entity that Corkum likens to a lifeboat being launched from a larger ship in a storm. After an intense laser pulse pulls an electron from an atom, the electron can recollide “just like the lifeboat can collide with the ship it was launched from,” he explains. The recollision event can generate either attosecond light pulses or high harmonics depending on the conditions.
This model “is an example of Paul’s unique ability to look into complex problems and to discard the unimportant details,” says David M. Villeneuve, a colleague of Corkum’s at NRC. It ultimately enabled Corkum and his collaborators to achieve sub-femtosecond pulses for the first time. He and his group are now working to use attosecond pulses to “take movies,” or observe electron dynamics in real time, he says. “We’re very close.”
Corkum earned a B.Sc. in physics from Acadia University, in Nova Scotia, in 1965 and a Ph.D. from Lehigh in 1972. He began work at NRC in 1973 and has been there ever since. In 2008, NRC formed a joint attosecond science laboratory, called JASLab, with the University of Ottawa. Corkum was named director of attosecond and strong field science for JASLab and became a professor at the university as part of the deal.
Among Corkum’s numerous awards are the 2005 Quantum Electronics Award from the Institute of Electrical & Electronics Engineers and the 2008 Polanyi Prize. He was given the Order of Canada in 2007 and is a fellow of the American Physical Society, the Royal Society of London, and, most recently, the National Academy of Sciences.
Corkum will present the award address before the Division of Physical Chemistry.
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