Published in Chemistry World, 9 Jun 2010
An international team of researchers has used attosecond laser pulses to track the movement of electrons in molecules for the first time. The breakthrough suggests that attosecond lasers will soon enable scientists to address problems in chemistry and biology, which until now were too complex for attosecond science.
At just 10-18 seconds, an attosecond is to one second what one second is to the age of the universe. For almost a decade scientists have been able to create laser pulses this brief, in doing so opening up a new level in atomic probing. Unlike femtosecond pulses, which can only ‘freeze’ the position of atoms and molecules, attosecond pulses can freeze the position of the orbiting electrons themselves. […]
The rest of this article is available here.