Time Shredding
Tracking smallest particles
Stephen Leone, the chemist of the microworld, in his laser laboratory at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Small, smaller, smallest. Fast, faster, fastest. These appear to be the watchwords for today's technology. Moreover, they guide research for tomorrow's technology and University of California, Berkeley, chemist and physicist Stephen Leone helps lead the way. He works with the smallest and fastest particles ever observed. For the first time, he and an international team of scientists used ultrashort flashes of laser light to directly observe an atom's outer electrons. Through a process called attosecond absorption spectroscopy, his team was able to time, with great precision, the repetitive variations between electrons that simultaneously produce quantum states. The outermost electrons of an atom are crucial for deciding how an atom will react chemically with other atoms. Attosecond transient absorption will, in Leone's words, "allow us to unravel processes within and among atoms, molecules and crystals on the electronic timescale" processes that previously could only be hinted at with studies.
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