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  • RESEARCH HIGHLIGHT

Electrons are caught in the act of relaxing — over quadrillionths of a second

Physicists fire lasers at electrons to understand how the particles gain and shed energy.
3D illustration of atomic structure, with red electrons orbiting blue and white nuclei.

Electrons (red; illustration) need only 13–34 femtoseconds to excite and redistribute their energy when hit with laser light. Credit: Shutterstock

Physicists have observed with record precision how electrons, when excited by light, gain and redistribute energy over time — a phenomenon that previous research has been unable to measure on such short timescales.

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Nature 590, 531 (2021)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-00434-z

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