These glass plates are replicas of the plates used by Pierre Agostini when he first succeeded in creating extremely short pulses of laser light. The plates were used in a crucial step of the experiment to delay some of the laser light. Both plates are equally thick since the smaller one has been cut from the larger one. Positioning the plates just right, splitting the laser into two parts, and letting each part pass through its own plate delays one laser pulse in relation to the other with very high precision.
Agostini’s used harmonics in the laser light’s wavelengths to create and study laser pulse trains. By combining the pulse trains with a delayed part of the original laser pulse, Agostini and his colleagues were able to study how the harmonics were in phase with each other.
Pierre Agostini donated the delay plates to the Nobel Prize Museum in 2023.
