The shortest pulse of electrons to date has been recorded, lasting just 53 billionths of a billionth of a second
Eleftherios Goulielmakis/University of Rostock
Researchers have achieved a new world record by creating the shortest pulse of electrons ever recorded. The pulse lasted a mere 53 attoseconds, which is equivalent to 53 billionths of a billionth of a second. This breakthrough could have significant implications for the development of more accurate electron microscopes that can capture stationary images at the atomic level, as well as potentially accelerating data transmission in computer chips.
Electron pulses are used to represent data in computers and to capture images in electron microscopes. The shorter the pulse, the faster information can be transmitted.
Eleftherios Goulielmakis and his team at the University of Rostock in Germany have been working on reducing the duration of electron pulses as much as possible. Pulses of electrons created by electrical fields inside circuits are limited by the frequency at which electrons can oscillate within matter. Goulielmakis’ team has been using bursts of light to trigger these short electron pulses.
In their previous work in 2016, Goulielmakis’ team achieved a flash of visible light that lasted just 380 attoseconds. They have now used the same technique to focus lasers on a tungsten needle, knocking electrons off its tip and into a vacuum. The resulting 53-attosecond pulse of electrons was even shorter than the pulse of light that initiated it, lasting just a fifth of the time it takes for an electron in a hydrogen atom to orbit its nucleus, according to the Bohr model.
This ultra-short pulse of electrons could revolutionize electron microscopy by allowing for sharper, more time-specific imaging of particles. It could enhance the resolution of electron microscope images by enabling the capture of electrons in motion, revealing the movement and interactions of atoms and electrons.
“The attosecond electron pulse will help the resolution to be fast enough to capture electrons in motion,” explains Goulielmakis. “If we create electron microscopes using our attosecond electron pulses, then we have sufficient resolution not only to see atoms in motion, which would be already an exciting thing, but even how electrons jump among those atoms.”
