A camera that captures moments in the quantum world
Researchers belonging to the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research, Stuttgart, Manish Garg and Klaus Kern, have built a microscope for the high-speed processes that happen on the quantum level. The two physicists used ultrashort laser pulses along with a scanning tunneling microscope. However, until now, these microscopes have not been able to achieve temporal resolution sufficient to track electrons. Manish Garg says that the combination of the microscope and the ultrafast pulses allowed them to efficiently use the advantages of the two methods to make up for what they lack. The researchers fire the short pulses of light at the microscopic tip, positioned with atomic precision, to start the tunneling process, enabling the high-speed camera to achieve HD resolution.
The microscope, best described as an HD camera for the quantum world, supports precise tracking of electron movement to the level of an individual atom. This precision will help it to offer useful insights when developing extremely fast and small electronic components. The processes that happen in the quantum world are challenging to decipher even for experienced physicists. For instance, the things that happen inside computers or smartphones do not only occur at an extremely fast pace but also take place in a tiny space. To analyze these processes and optimize transistors, videos of the electrons would be beneficial for physicists. For this, the researchers would need a high-speed camera that captures each frame of the so-called electron video for merely a few hundred attoseconds, which is one quintillionth of a second. In this time frame, light can only go the distance of a water molecule. For many years, physicists have relied on the laser pulses of a suitably short length that serves as an attosecond camera, although it results in blurred images.
The new microscope is a boon for researchers and will allow them to precisely identify where the imaged electron is located at the atomic level. The new technique helps physicists measure the exact location of electrons at a specific time to the individual atom with the accuracy of a few hundred attoseconds. Klaus Kern, Director, Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research, says that their research is crucial to understand chemical reactivity, for instance, to study the conversion of light energy in charged particles.
