Attosecond

The subatomic world is hard to image not just because it’s incredibly tiny, but super fast too. Now University of Arizona physicists have developed the world’s fastest electron microscope to capture events lasting just one quintillionth of a second.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Science has awarded the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physics to Pierre Agostini, Ferenc Krausz and Anne L'Huillier for work that's "given humanity new tools for exploring the world of electrons inside atoms and molecules."

Movements at the particle scale happen extremely quickly, which makes it hard to see what’s going on in there. Now engineers have developed an “attoclock” that can take snapshots of electrons in increments as small as quintillionths of a second.

To better understand molecular events, scientists use short-pulse X-ray lasers to take precise snapshots. Now, researchers at ETH Zurich have managed to shorten the pulse of an X-ray laser down to 43 attoseconds – which the team says is the shortest controlled event ever created by humankind.

The world's shortest laser pulse, measuring only 67 attoseconds in duration, has been generated at the University of Central Florida.

March 15, 2007 Physicists at the University of Bath will soon begin a research project which could be an important step towards the development of photonic c