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Freezing Electrons in Flight
http://uanews.org/story/freezing-electrons-flight[font face=Serif][font size=5]Freezing Electrons in Flight[/font]
By Daniel Stolte, University Communications | October 12, 2012
[font size=4]Using the world’s fastest laser pulses, which can freeze the ultrafast motion of electrons and atoms, UA physicists have caught the action of molecules breaking apart and electrons getting knocked out of atoms. Their research helps us better understand molecular processes and ultimately be able to control them in many possible applications.[/font]
[font size=3]In 1878, a now iconic series of photographs instantly solved a long-standing mystery: Does a galloping horse touch the ground at all times? (It doesn’t.) The images of Eadweard Muybridge taken alongside a racetrack marked the beginning of high-speed photography.
Approximately 134 years later, researchers in the University of Arizona department of physics have solved a similar mystery, one in which super-excited oxygen molecules have replaced the horse, and ultrafast, high-energy laser flashes have replaced Muybridge’s photo emulsion plates.
…
Its latest accomplishment, published in Physical Review Letters, is a real-time series of snapshots documenting what happens to an oxygen molecule when it pops apart after absorbing too much energy to maintain the stable bond between its two atoms.
…[/font][/font]
By Daniel Stolte, University Communications | October 12, 2012
[font size=4]Using the world’s fastest laser pulses, which can freeze the ultrafast motion of electrons and atoms, UA physicists have caught the action of molecules breaking apart and electrons getting knocked out of atoms. Their research helps us better understand molecular processes and ultimately be able to control them in many possible applications.[/font]
[font size=3]In 1878, a now iconic series of photographs instantly solved a long-standing mystery: Does a galloping horse touch the ground at all times? (It doesn’t.) The images of Eadweard Muybridge taken alongside a racetrack marked the beginning of high-speed photography.
Approximately 134 years later, researchers in the University of Arizona department of physics have solved a similar mystery, one in which super-excited oxygen molecules have replaced the horse, and ultrafast, high-energy laser flashes have replaced Muybridge’s photo emulsion plates.
…
Its latest accomplishment, published in Physical Review Letters, is a real-time series of snapshots documenting what happens to an oxygen molecule when it pops apart after absorbing too much energy to maintain the stable bond between its two atoms.
…[/font][/font]
