E-Mail
IMAGE: The inherent delay between the emission of the two types of electron leads to a characteristic ellipse in the analysed data. In principle, the position of individual data points around. view more
Credit: Daniel Haynes / Jörg Harms
An international consortium of scientists, initiated by Reinhard Kienberger, Professor of Laser and X-ray Physics at the Technical University of Munich (TUM), several years ago, has made significant measurements in the femtosecond range at the U.S. Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC).
However, on these miniscule timescales, it is extremely difficult to synchronize the X-ray pulse that sparks a reaction in the sample on the one hand and the laser pulse which observes it on the other. This problem is called timing jitter, and it is a major hurdle in ongoing efforts to perform time-resolved experiments at XFELs with ever-shorter resolution.
Date Time
Clocking movement of electrons inside an atom
Ultrafast science is pursued at the Technical University of Munich (TUM). An international consortium of scientists, initiated by Reinhard Kienberger, Professor of Laser and X-ray Physics several years ago, has made significant measurements in the femtosecond range at the U.S. Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC).
X-ray free-electron lasers (XFELs) have delivered intense, ultrashort X-ray pulses in the femtosecond range for over a decade. A femtosecond is equivalent to a millionth of a billionth of a second.
One of the most promising applications of XFELs is in biology, where researchers can capture images down to the atomic scale even before the radiation damage destroys the sample. In physics and chemistry, these X-rays can also shed light on the fastest processes occurring in nature with a shutter speed lasting only one femtosecond.