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'Carve out' ultra-short laser pulses to study matter

2020-08-05T08:46:43.985Z


Ultra-fast pulses of laser light can be 'sculpted' at will to interrogate matter and study atoms and molecules (ANSA)


Ultra-fast pulses of laser light can be 'sculpted' at will to interrogate matter and study atoms and molecules: the study published in the journal Nature Photonics shows this by an international research group formed by the Institute of Photonics and Nanotechnologies of the National Research Council (Cnr-Ifn) with the Politecnico di Milano, the Synchrotron of Hamburg and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Mit).

The researchers managed to superimpose different pulses of light in a synchronized way (thanks to an innovative process of 'coherent synthesis') in order to create real optical waveforms. "It's like conducting an orchestra," explains Cristian Manzoni, a researcher at Cnr-Ifn and at the Politecnico. "Each impulse is a musical instrument, called to produce its own sound; coherent synthesis is the perfect execution of a score. Potentially, this orchestra will be able to give rise to an infinite multitude of waveforms, that is melodies. coherent in these experiments is therefore a very promising approach for the generation of laser light pulses with any shape and duration ".

The experiment took many years of work. "We built the first prototype in the laboratories of the Politecnico di Milano", adds Giulio Cerullo, from the University's Physics Department. "It was like a small complex, but from this first experiment, published in 2012, the idea of ​​creating the large orchestra was born. The experimental apparatus was thus rebuilt and enlarged at the Hamburg laboratories".

The waveforms that can now be synthesized will expand the opportunities to control the interaction of light with matter, especially at high intensities capable of modifying atoms and molecules.

Source: ansa

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