A record-breaking short pulse of electrons was produced that was only 5.3 billionths of a billionth of a second long. This is so fast that a microscope can capture images of electrons jumping between atoms.
Physics
January 25, 2023
The shortest electronic pulse ever recorded was 53 billionths of a second in duration Eleftherios Gurielmakis/University of Rostock
The researchers broke the record for the shortest pulse of electrons created, producing a signal just 53 attoseconds long, or 1/53 billionth of a second. This work could lead to even more precise electron microscopy that can capture still images that are atomically sharp, rather than just blurry. It can also speed up data transfer for computer chips.
Pulses of electrons are used to represent data in computers and to capture images in electron microscopes. The shorter the pulse, the faster the information can be transmitted.
Eleftherios Goulielmakis and his colleagues at the University of Rostock, Germany, have worked to reduce the length of such pulses as much as possible.
The pulse of electrons produced by an electric field in a normal circuit is limited by the frequency at which electrons can oscillate in matter. According to Goulielmakis, the pulse should last at least half a cycle of these oscillations. This is because this cycle produces the “pushing force” of electrons.
Because light vibrates at a much higher frequency, his team uses short bursts of light to trigger pulses of electrons.
In 2016, Goulielmakis’ team created a flash of visible light lasting just 380 attoseconds. Using the same technique, the team now focused a laser to knock electrons off the tip of a tungsten needle and into the vacuum.
The 53 attosecond electron pulse they detected was even shorter than the light pulse that caused it. Goulielmakis says that in Bohr’s model of the hydrogen atom, he lasted one-fifth of the time it takes an electron of a hydrogen atom to orbit its nucleus.
This short electron pulse allows the electron microscope to focus on a shorter slice, much like slowing down the shutter speed of a camera, revealing particle motion more clearly.
“Sometimes [in electron microscope images] You can see that the atoms are not very confined. It’s a little blurry. Resolution is not necessarily bad. Because the electrons aren’t stationary at a specific point, right? They’re just creating clouds around the atom. Attosecond electron pulses are fast enough to capture electrons in motion and help increase resolution. ”
“If we could use attosecond electron pulses to create an electron microscope, we would have enough resolution to not only see the atoms in motion, but how the electrons jump between those atoms. You can see it,” says Goulielmakis.
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