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 ...

Intense laser light modifies the pairing of electrons

Finding lights a way for bottom-up controlling chemical reactions with lasers in the future – based purely on electrons, the “glue” of chemistry

14-Apr-2022 - The quantum-mechanical exchange interaction between electrons, a consequence of the Pauli exclusion principle, can be specifically modified with intense infrared light fields on time scales of a few femtoseconds, as time-resolved experiments on sulfur hexafluoride molecules show. This finding ...

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 ...

A Keen Sense for Molecules

27-Feb-2018 - Laser physicists from the Laboratory of Attosecond Physics at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität and the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics have developed an extremely powerful broadband infrared light source. This light source opens up a whole new range of opportunities in medicine, life ...

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 ...

Scientists measure soot particles in flight

29-Jun-2012 - For the first time, air-polluting soot particles have been imaged in flight down to nanometre resolution. Pioneering a new technique, the international team, including researchers from DESY, snapped the most detailed images yet of airborne aerosols. “For the first time we can actually see the ...

Single atoms for detecting extremely weak forces

MPQ-scientists demonstrate that due to synchronisation atoms can be influenced by forces as weak as 5 yoctonewton

06-Aug-2010 - Back in the 17th century the Dutch physicist Christiaan Huygens made the observation that the oscillation of two pendulums synchronize once they get under mutual influence. This holds for even very loose coupling, for instance, when both pendulums are mounted onto the same wall. Interestingly, a ...