Ytterbium thin-disk lasers pave the way for sensitive detection of atmospheric pollutants

The laser's capacity to generate high-power, stable pulses in the SWIR range is a game-changer for field-resolved spectroscopy and femtosecond fieldoscopy

19-Nov-2024 - Alongside carbon dioxide, methane is a key driver of global warming. To detect and monitor the climate pollutants in the atmosphere precisely, scientists at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light (MPL) have developed an advanced laser technology. A high-power ytterbium thin-disk laser ...

Clocking electron movements inside an atom

Scientists dramatically enhance the achievable resolution at free-electron lasers with a new technique

20-Jan-2021 - Hard X-ray free-electron lasers (XFELs) have delivered intense, ultrashort X-ray pulses for over a decade. 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 ...

Molecules Brilliantly Illuminated

25-Apr-2018 - Molecules are the building blocks of life. Like all other organisms, we are made of them. They control our biorhythm, and they can also reflect our state of health. Researchers at the Laboratory for Attosecond Physics (LAP) – a joint venture between Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU) and the ...

Electric current at record speed

Scientists have generated the fastest electric current that has ever been measured inside a solid material

27-Oct-2016 - In the field of electronics, the principle 'the smaller, the better' applies. Some building blocks of computers or mobile phones, however, have become nearly as small today as only a few atoms. It is therefore hardly possible to reduce them any further. Another factor for the performance of ...

Attosecond Electron Catapult

14-Aug-2015 - A team of physicists and chemists from the University of Rostock, the Laboratory of Attosecond Physics at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics, and Freie Universität Berlin has studied the interaction of light with tiny glass particles. The relationship ...

Light waves allow preferred bond breaking in symmetric molecules

Selectively shaking and breaking C-H bonds in symmetric hydrocarbon molecules with the waveform of femtosecond laser pulses

20-May-2014 - Chemical bonds between carbon and hydrogen atoms are amongst the strongest in nature and their selective breaking, in particular in symmetric molecules, is of interest to chemical synthesis and the development of new biologically active molecules. An international team of scientists has now ...

A question of style

The reaction rate of many molecules depends on their shape

08-Oct-2013 - Most molecules occur in several shapes, which may behave very differently. Using a sorting machine for molecules, a German–Swiss research team can now for the first time directly measure the various reaction rates of different forms of the same compound. Many chemical compounds have numerous ...

How small is the proton?

International team of researchers observes unexpectedly small proton radius in a precision laser experiment with exotic hydrogen atoms

12-Jul-2010 - The proton - one of the universal building-blocks of all matter - is even smaller than had previously been assumed. This is the result obtained at the Paul-Scherrer-Institut (PSI) in Villigen (Switzerland) by an international research team, including scientists from the Max Planck Institute of ...

Electrons are late starters

02-Jul-2010 - When physicists search for new semiconductors for chips or lasers, they have been able to rely on sophisticated computer programs - until now. However, it is possible that the models these programs have used to predict the electronic properties of a material oversimplify reality. An international ...

A predilection for certain symmetries: Researchers discover why atoms in solids show a preference for certain structures

13-Apr-2010 - The process involved here sounds unwieldy, but is, in fact, quite simple: a material has a 6-fold rotation symmetry if the arrangement of its atoms remains unchanged when it is rotated by 60 degrees – one sixth of a circle. The atoms in metals often order themselves in this way. However, more ...