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Chemical physics

Electronic movies

Nature volume 460, pages 960–961 (2009)Cite this article

A Correction to this article was published on 02 September 2009

This article has been updated

Strong laser fields can tear an electron away from a molecule, leaving a hole in the electronic wavefunction that races through the molecule. The ultrafast motion of such a hole has been traced at last.

The first event in a light-induced reaction is that the electrons in the irradiated molecule respond to the incident light. This response occurs on attosecond timescales (1 attosecond is 10−18 seconds), and even the fastest time-resolved measurements have been unable to probe the dynamics of the process. But on page 972 of this issue, Smirnova et al.1 provide a glimpse into the fascinating world of attosecond electron dynamics, in effect revealing the opening frames of a movie that records the rearrangement of electrons when a molecule is ionized by a laser.

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Figure 1: High-harmonic generation.

Change history

  • 02 September 2009

    The News & Views article “Chemical physics: Electronic movies” by Marc Vrakking (Nature 460, 960–961, 2009) stated at the end of the fifth paragraph that “A similar conclusion was recently reached in a study of harmonic generation from nitrogen molecules”, and incorrectly cited reference 8 of the article.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Marc Vrakking is at the FOM Institute for Atomic and Molecular Physics (AMOLF), Science Park 113, Amsterdam 1098 XG, the Netherlands. m.vrakking@amolf.nl ,

    Marc Vrakking

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  1. Marc Vrakking
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Vrakking, M. Electronic movies. Nature 460, 960–961 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1038/460960a

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