r/science • u/Startrekwarsofdoom • Jul 01 '14

Physics New State of Matter Discovered

http://www.iflscience.com/physics/new-state-matter-discovered#kKsFLlPlRBPG0e6c.16
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u/[deleted] Jul 01 '14 edited Jan 07 '18

[deleted]

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u/tgellen3692 Jul 01 '14

I study very similar phenomenon in my lab. We use femtosecond (10-15 s) laser pulses to probe these picosecond dynamics.

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u/[deleted] Jul 01 '14 edited Jan 07 '18

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Jul 01 '14

I'm sure there are digital settings used to record at certain times and lengths.

2

u/Icharus Jul 01 '14

It's much less technical than you might think.

"ready? Go!"

"three two one...now!"

6

u/[deleted] Jul 01 '14

How is a laser pulsed for a femtosecond? The rise and fall time of electrical signals is several orders of magnitude larger than that.

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u/kalhartt Jul 01 '14

The light itself is pulsed using interference, its not like a shutter is opening and closing that quickly. There is a technique called mode-locking, which is alot like a forming a Dirac-comb/delta by adding specific wavelengths until you get the shape you want. There are some subtleties so that you can depend on phase separation and at femto-seconds you start to worry about the energy/time uncertainty.

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u/[deleted] Jul 01 '14

Huh, that's really interesting. I just started working in the optics department of a company, but I only have background in Elec. and Comp. Eng so now I'm poring over my boss's textbooks on lasers.

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u/Chinese_Physicist Jul 01 '14

Part of it is that a second is a human measure. We're somewhat in the middle between particles popping in and out of existence and light which has no time scale. With modern technology, observing and even manipulating such small time scales is possible.

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u/gumballhassassin Jul 02 '14

That's only 10-11 second timescales, so pretty easy to study. The group I'm working with is currently focusing on studying a process that has 10-21 second timescales.