Tag Archives: Optical flywheels with attosecond jitter

All about time, metronomes, and attoseconds

Apparently there’s a metronome (the world’s most accurate) which makes it possible to get slow-motion videos/movies of atoms and molecules. The Jan. 16, 2012 news item on Nanowerk offers this,

The world’s most accurate metronome keeps stroke to an incredible 10 quintillionth of a second. The device enables slow-motion pictures from the world of molecules and atoms, scientists from the Center for Free-Electron Laser Science (CFEL) in Hamburg, Germany, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) report. The metronome, an ultrashort pulse laser, acting as an optical flywheel, is currently the most precise clock generator on short time scales, writes the research team headed by DESY scientist Prof. Franz X. Kärtner in the journal Nature Photonics (“Optical flywheels with attosecond jitter”). CFEL is a joint venture of DESY, the German Max Planck Society and the University of Hamburg.

I find this prospect gobsmacking (quite stunning), from the news item,

The accuracy of the laser beat is ten attoseconds (quintillionth of a second), or 0.000 000 000 000 000 01 seconds. [emphasis mine] Atomic clocks achieve a higher precision, yet on longer time scales. Only with this accurate laser beat it is possible to take motion pictures of the nanocosm, as the movement of electrons in molecules and atoms take place on time scales of some 100 attoseconds to femtoseconds. [emphasis mine] “That is about the time an electron needs for orbiting a hydrogen nucleus or for the electric charge to move through a molecule during photosynthesis,” Kärtner explains. With novel light sources, so-called free-electron lasers, researchers expect fundamental new insights into those processes.

I can hardly wait to see my first nanocosm in motion. There’s no word as to when this might be possible in either the news item on Nanowerk or on the Center for Free-Electron Laser Science (CFEL) announcement page.