ZPEnergy.com - THE SHORTEST LIGHT PULSE EVER

Researchers in Italy have created the shortest light pulse yet-a single isolated burst of extreme-ultraviolet light that lasts for only 130 attoseconds (billionths of a billionth of a second). Shining this ultrashort light pulse on atoms and molecules can reveal new details of their inner workings--providing benefits to fundamental science as well as potential industrial applications such as better controlling chemical reactions.

Working at Italy's National Laboratory for Ultrafast and Ultraintense Optical Science in Milan (as well as laboratories in Padua and Naples), the researchers believe that their current technique will allow them to create even shorter pulses well below 100 attoseconds.

In previous experiments, longer pulses, in the higher hundreds of attoseconds, have been created. The general process for this experiment is the same. An intense infrared laser strikes a jet of gas (usually argon or neon). The laser's powerful electric fields rock the electrons back and forth, causing them to release a train of attosecond pulses consisting of high-energy photons (extreme ultraviolet in this experiment). Creating a single isolated attosecond pulse, rather than a train of them, is more complex. To do this, the researchers employ their previously developed technique for delivering intense short (5 femtosecond) laser pulses to an argon gas target. They use additional optical techniques (including the frequency comb that was a subject of the 2005 Nobel Prize in Physics) for creating and shaping a single attosecond pulse. The results are being presented this week (paper JThA5) at the Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics and the Quantum Electronics and Laser Science Conference (CLEO/QELS).

Expanded story at: http://www.cleoconference.org/media_center/lightpulse.aspx ; also see Sansone et al., Science, 20 October 2006.

Via PHYSICS NEWS UPDATE
The American Institute of Physics Bulletin of Physics News
Number 823 May 8, 2007 by Phillip F. Schewe, Ben Stein
www.aip.org/pnu


Create an account	Home · Topics · Downloads · Your Account · Submit News · Top 10


All logos and trademarks in this site are property of their respective owner. The comments are property of their posters, all the rest © 2002-2016 by ZPEnergy. Disclaimer: No content, on or affiliated with ZPEnergy should be construed as or relied upon as investment advice. While every effort is made to ensure that the information contained on ZPEnergy is correct, the operators of ZPEnergy make no warranties as to its accuracy. In all respects visitors should seek independent verification and investment advice. Keywords: ZPE, ZPF, Zero Point Energy, Zero Point Fluctuations, ZPEnergy, New Energy Technology, Small Scale Implementation, Energy Storage Technology, Space-Energy, Space Energy, Natural Potential, Investors, Investing, Vacuum Energy, Electromagnetic, Over Unity, Overunity, Over-Unity, Free Energy, Free-Energy, Ether, Aether, Cold Fusion, Cold-Fusion, Fuel Cell, Quantum Mechanics, Van der Waals, Casimir, Advanced Physics, Vibrations, Advanced Energy Conversion, Rotational Magnetics, Vortex Mechanics, Rotational Electromagnetics, Earth Electromagnetics, Gyroscopes, Gyroscopic Effects PHP-Nuke Copyright © 2005 by Francisco Burzi. This is free software, and you may redistribute it under the GPL. PHP-Nuke comes with absolutely no warranty, for details, see the license.