Ultrafast

In physics, ultrafast describes events that occur on femtosecond timescales. It was once impossible to observe anything that happened on this timescale due to the speed limitations of electronics and other experimental apparatus, but with advances in pulsed dye lasers and later the creation of the pulsed , which when mode-locked can create pulses as short as 5 femtoseconds (roughly two optical cycles) this regime has become accessible.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The ability to study something that happens on very short timescales is useful in many fields of science. Ultrafast lasers are currently being used in many applications including: to study the femtosecond dynamics of electrons in solids, to create small, tabletop-sized fusion experiments, to manipulate and monitor chemical reactions, to modify and image magnetic surfaces, and to create and study plasmas. They have also been used extensively in microscopy.

Femtosecond: A femtosecond is the SI unit of time equal to 10-15 of a second. That is one quadrillionth, or one millionth of one billionth of a second. For context, a femtosecond is to a second, what a second is to about 31.7 million years....

Dye laser: A dye laser is a laser that uses an organic dye as a lasing medium, usually as a liquid solution. Compared to gases and most solid-state lasing media, a dye can usually be used for a much wider range of wavelengths. The wide bandwidth make them particularly suitable for tunable lasers and pulsed las...

Fusion: Fusion typically refers to the merging of two or more entities into a single one:...