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The ability to track the electron’s journey through a material and observe how the material’s energy levels shift opens up vast new possibilities in the field of quantum mechanics.
By Pesach Benson, TPS
In a groundbreaking advancement in the field of quantum mechanics and ultrafast optics, Israeli scientists unveiled a new technique that could revolutionize high-speed computing and communication technologies.
The research demonstrates how a strong laser pulse can induce changes in a material’s fundamental properties within attoseconds — a unit of time so brief that light itself crosses only the width of a hydrogen atom in that period.
“Once we know how to trace the ‘journey’ of individual electrons between energy levels in a material, we can use light and the knowledge we have gained about its effects to deliberately and precisely change the properties of the material within hundreds or tens of attoseconds,” said Prof Nirit Dudovich, from the Weizmann Institute’s Department of Physics of Complex Systems, who led the research.
“Based on this ability, the fastest processors that can be produced may be developed, which will accelerate by orders of magnitude the rate at which information is transmitted or processed,” she explained.
Published in the peer-reviewed Nature Photonics journal, the study centers around the groundbreaking discovery that intense laser pulses can rapidly alter a material’s behavior, shifting it from a conductor to an insulator, or changing its transparency.
While such transformations were previously understood in theory, capturing them in real time has been a monumental challenge due to the extreme timescales involved.
To overcome this obstacle, Dudovich’s team developed a novel dual-laser technique. Graduate students Omer Kenler, Chen Mor, and Noa Yaffe played a key role in the design of the method, which uses two precisely timed laser beams.
The first beam, consisting of relatively long pulses, interacted with the material to induce the desired change.
Simultaneously, a second beam of ultra-short attosecond pulses functions like a high-speed camera, capturing the delay as the light passes through the altered material.
By combining the data from these beams and analyzing the resulting interference pattern, the team was able to reconstruct the changes in the material with unprecedented precision.
“This method is like a navigation app for electrons,” explained Dudovich. “Just as apps like Waze estimate travel time, our method reconstructs the electron’s ‘travel plan’ through the material by analyzing how much light was delayed. From this, we learn how the material’s energy levels responded to the light.”
The ability to track the electron’s journey through a material and observe how the material’s energy levels shift opens up vast new possibilities in the field of quantum mechanics.
Dudovich’s team showed that intense laser pulses could split, merge, or rearrange these energy levels in real time. The breakthrough is not just an observation—it provides a tool to control the material’s physical state with precision at quantum speeds.
The implications of this research extend far beyond the laboratory. The ability to manipulate and monitor ultrafast changes in material properties has profound applications in the development of next-generation processors and communication technologies.
“The discoveries could lead to the development of fast processors that will accelerate the rate at which information is transmitted or processed by orders of magnitude,” Dudovich emphasized.
The breakthrough could potentially lead to the creation of processors operating at speeds far beyond the capabilities of current technology.
By using light, rather than electricity, to manipulate the quantum states of materials, these processors could process data at optical or even attosecond speeds, greatly enhancing computing power and energy efficiency.
In addition to computing, the new technique holds promise for high-speed communication and the development of quantum devices.
The ability to manipulate the refractive index of materials at such fine scales could lead to the creation of optical switches and modulators far surpassing the capabilities of current fiber-optic technology.
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