Physicists succeed in stopping an electron with femtosecond lasers
Progress does not stand still, and a scientific group from the University of Constance has managed to take control of condensed-state electrons through the use of femtosecond lasers. With this technique, they were able to start and stop the movement of electrons in less than 10 ^ -15 seconds.
Another step to speed up your work
As you know, modern semiconductor transistors work (open and close) in a time equal to one picosecond (10 ^ -12 seconds).
It is this threshold that is the limiting stopper of the operation of all modern processors based on semiconductor transistors.
This ceiling was practically installed back in 2015, when scientists managed to "overclock" the transistor to a frequency of 1 THz.
But a research group from the University of Constance, led by scientist M. Ludwig, approached the problem from the other side and learned to control the electron with ultrashort laser pulses.
Thanks to this, it was possible to achieve a subfemtosecond time of electron control (slightly less than 10 ^ -15 seconds).
How it was achieved
In order to achieve this ultra-fast operation, the researchers created a special installation, which consists of an antenna representing two triangular plates placed relative to each other at a distance of 6 nanometers (by the way, made of pure gold) and laser installation.
Scientists delivered laser pulses at regular intervals and measured the electric field between the plates.
So, passing through the minimum gap between the plates, the laser beam started the process of electric current flow. As a result, an electromagnetic field was formed.
The measurements made showed that the start and stop of electrons was on the order of one femtosecond.
The results of their experiments and the findings were published in the journal Nature.
This discovery in the future will allow creating even faster and more powerful transistors, which will significantly increase the data processing speed of new processors.
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