The fastest microscope in the world freezes time in one quintillionth of a second

The subatomic world is difficult to grasp, not only because it is incredibly tiny, but also because it is super fast. Now, physicists from the University of Arizona have developed the fastest electron microscope in the world, capable of capturing phenomena that last only a quintillionth of a second.

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A good camera, with a shutter speed measured in milliseconds, could take a sharp photo of a person running. But the fastest cameras in the world, transmission electron microscopes, can capture events on an attosecond scale, such as photos of electrons running.

By the way, an attosecond is one quintillionth of a second, which makes a millisecond (one thousandth of a second) seem like an eternity.

A milestone in physics that could contribute to quantum physics, chemistry, and biology

If we scale up, there are as many attoseconds in a second as there are seconds in 31.7 billion years, which is more than twice the amount of time the universe has existed. These are truly unfathomable numbers.

In any case, as we read in New Atlas, previous efforts to capture events on that kind of timescale have reached up to 43 attoseconds, which researchers at the time described as ‘the shortest controlled event ever created by humanity.’ Now, the team from the University of Arizona has further reduced the time, freezing it in a single attosecond.

The new work is based on the research of Pierre Agostini, Ferenc Krausz, and Anne L’Huilliere, who generated the first pulses of light short enough to be measured in attoseconds. This earned them the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2023.

For the new study, researchers developed what they call an ‘attomicroscope.’ First, an ultraviolet light pulse is fired at a photocathode, which releases ultrafast electrons inside the attomicroscope.

Next, a laser pulse is divided into two beams, which are sent to the electrons moving through the microscope. One of these beams is polarized and arrives at slightly different times, generating a ‘gated’ electron pulse that allows obtaining images of a sample, in this case, of graphene.

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Thanks to this technique, the team was able to generate electron pulses of only one attosecond in duration, which allowed them to observe ultrafast electron movements that are normally invisible. The researchers claim that this breakthrough could have applications in quantum physics, chemistry, and biology.