2. One quintillionth of a second; one thousandth of a femtosecond.
3. There are 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 (translated as a million trillion) attoseconds in one second.
In February, 2004, a team of physicists led by Dr. Ferenc Krausz (Austria) of Vienna University of Technology, announced that they had created pulses of ultraviolet laser light lasting just 250 attoseconds (250 times 10-18 seconds). Using these attosecond light pulses, they were able to observe electrons in neon atoms and distinguish between events just 100 attoseconds apart.
A statement of goals by Attoworld: "Our primary research goal is to develop tools and techniques enabling us to control the motion of electrons on atomic length and time scales and observe these motions in space and time with sub-atomic (picometre and attosecond) resolution."
Watching electrons tunnel, German-Austrian-Dutch team observes electron tunnelling for the first time
It has been predicted that ionization of atoms in strong electromagnetic fields occurs via a quantum mechanical process: electrons ovrecome the attractive force of the atomic core by tunnelling through the potential wall.
Now for the first time (Nature, April 5, 2007) a German-Austrian-Dutch collaboration around professor Ferenc Krausz, Director at the max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics, has succeeded in capturing this process in real time.
Using ultrashort laser pulses the scientists were able to reveal distinct steps of ionization each lasting several hundred attoseconds.
The result represents a milestone in gaining deeper insight into electronic motion inside atoms and molecules, which is relevant to advancing many areas of science, technology, and medicine.