In Pursuit of the Briefest Beat
Attosecond pulses of light could open electrons’ fast-paced world
In his mind, Paul Corkum envisioned a dramatic thriller. Its actors were the pulsating electric fields of ordinary infrared laser beams and the electrons of atoms in the laser’s path. As the plot unfolded, a puzzle would be resolved — opening, he realized, a new frontier in the measurement of the ultrafast and the ultrabrief.
Corkum is a laser and plasma physicist with Canada’s National Research Council and the University of Ottawa. His vision, in 1993, led him to become a pioneer in a field called attosecond science; since then his work has won him a stack of Canada’s top science prizes. He directs the newly opened Joint Laboratory for Attosecond Science in Ottawa. The laboratory produces X-ray flashes quick enough to “freeze” electrons orbiting an atom, and claims to make Ottawa the attosecond capital of the world.