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The Attosecond World—there's plenty of time at the bottom

The Attosecond World—there's plenty of time at the bottom

Date11th Oct 2023

Time05:00 PM

Venue Physics Seminar Hall (HSB 209)

PAST EVENT

Details

The Nobel Prize in Physics 2023 was awarded to three pioneers of attosecond science "for experimental methods that generate attosecond pulses of light for the study of electron dynamics in matter." The 2018 physics prize, in part, may be considered a prequel to the current recognition. A second contains as many attoseconds as the age of the Universe contains seconds. The physics operating on these scales is fascinatingly based out of the same set of physical laws and principles. Just as with the ultra-small world, in this ultra-short or -fast world of extremely small timescales, the world is inherently "quantum."

But what exactly are attosecond pulses, how do we make and measure the shortest events made by humans, how does nature behave on these timescales? We will attempt to get a peek into these questions and how we go about answering them on a tabletop turning a few knobs. This fascinating area of a scientific avenue which physics, chemistry, biology, electronics and quantum technologies: for the physicist, quantum effects, time-delays and details of the photoelectric effect, a complementary approach to investigate condensed matter, quantum-path interferometry and holography within atoms and molecules, quantum electronics on its natural timescales and even the nature of time in the quantum world; for the engineer, futuristic petahertz electronics, light-wave synthesizers and photonic devices; for biology and medicine, molecular-fingerprinting and x-rays; and for the chemist, an ability follow the dynamics in molecules and even steering chemical processes. This seminar is an attempt to open doors to the atto-world.

Speakers

Sivarama Krishnan

Physics