German Scientists Measure How Fast an Electron Jumps, the Shortest Time Interval Ever Measured
Measuring Electron Delay During photoemission, it was long thought electrons excited by high-energy light were ejected from their atoms instantaneously. New findings suggest there is an extremely short delay between excitation and expulsion, suggesting an unknown interaction between electrons may be at play. Thorsten Naeser / Max-Planck-Institute of Quantum Optics During an average day of knocking electrons loose from their host atoms with high-energy lasers, a team of European physicists uncovered the shortest time interval ever measured in nature. At about 20 attoseconds, the interval is indeed very short. That's 20 billionths of one billionth of one second. Blink and you've missed it many, many times over again. During photoemission - the expulsion of electrons from an atom by bombarding them with high-energy light - it's always been assumed that there is no delay between the photons' impact and the breaking loose of the target electron. But a group of German...