Absolute timing of the photoelectric effect
- Journal:
- Nature
- Published:
- DOI:
- 10.1038/s41586-018-0503-6
- Affiliations:
- 4
- Authors:
- 17
Research Highlight
Photoelectric effect timed by atomic clock
© Universal Images Group/Getty
An atomic stopwatch has clocked the photoelectric effect to within a few billionths of a billionth of a second.
The photoelectric effect, for which Albert Einstein was awarded his Nobel prize, occurs when a metal absorbs high-energy light and releases an electron. The reaction is so rapid that only the direction and energy of escaping electrons have been accurately measured, until now.
A team that included researchers from the Technological University of Munich stuck iodine atoms onto a tungsten crystal and hit them with X-rays. Iodine atoms react extremely quickly to X-rays so served as a stopwatch for the moment the X-rays hit the crystal’s surface, while a laser pulsing above the crystal measured the arrival time of the escaping tungsten electron. This enabled the researchers to calculate the photoelectric effect duration with attosecond (10−18 second) accuracy, and they observed tungsten generate photoelectrons in about 40 attoseconds.
Understanding photochemical reactions on different surfaces could help improve the efficiency of harvesting solar energy.
References
- Nature 561, 374–377 (2018). doi: 10.1038/s41586-018-0503-6