Hypershort flash of visible light produces 'white' attosecond X-ray light

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An array of multilayer mirrors compresses ultrabroadband laser pulses (orange beam) to 1.5 wave cycles. The attosecond x-ray pulses produced with them allow the control and real-time observation of atomic-scale electron motion. See the special sectio ...
An array of multilayer mirrors compresses ultrabroadband laser pulses (orange beam) to 1.5 wave cycles. The attosecond x-ray pulses produced with them allow the control and real-time observation of atomic-scale electron motion. See the special section on attosecond spectroscopy beginning on page 765. Photo: Thorsten Naeser for Max Planck Institute for Quantum Optics/Laboratory for Attosecond and High-Field Physics. Credit: Max Planck Institute

No flash of light can be shorter than the time it takes the wave carrying the flash to perform a full oscillation. A team headed by Prof. Ferenc Krausz has now succeeded in generating – for the first time – flashes of intense laser light that deliver more than half of their energy within a single well-controlled wave cycle.


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The Lightness of Electrons in a Twisting Metal Crystal

17 minutes ago | User rating: not rated yet
(PhysOrg.com) -- A team of researchers at Princeton University's Materials Research Science and Engineering Center has observed electrons moving through a crystal of bismuth metal behaving like light.

Scientists demonstrate highly directional semiconductor lasers

50 minutes ago | User rating: not rated yet
(PhysOrg.com) -- Applied scientists at Harvard collaborating with researchers at Hamamatsu Photonics in Hamamatsu City, Japan, have demonstrated, for the first time, highly directional semiconductor lasers ...

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6 hours ago | User rating: not rated yet
In 2002, a satellite called INTEGRAL was launched by the European Space Agency with an instrument on board to detect and measure gamma rays from space. Four years later, it yielded some intriguing data: An unusually high ...

Electron microscopy enters the picometer scale

Jul 24, 2008 | User rating: not rated yet
Jülich scientists have succeeded in precisely measuring atomic spacings down to a few picometres using new methods in ultrahigh-resolution electron microscopy. This makes it possible to find out decisive parameters ...

Revolutionary materials reflect ancient forms

Jul 24, 2008 | User rating: not rated yet
(PhysOrg.com) -- Although order is pleasing to the eye, it can quickly become boring. In Islamic architecture therefore, decoration often follows a strict yet aperiodic pattern. Similar structures also form ...
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