Optics made to measure
Joint spin-off of LMU Munich and MPG established
The research teams led by Ferenc Krausz, director at the Max-Planck-Institute of Quantum Optics and professor at LMU, and Ulf Kleineberg, who is also a professor at LMU include leading experts in the field of specialized optics.
Chirped mirrors allow one, for example, to compensate for the phenomenon of material-dependent dispersion, which occurs if the reflective surface delays light of different colors to different degrees – an effect that can increase pulse duration. Indeed, it was the ability of the chirped mirror to diminish this effect that first enabled the generation of ultrashort light pulses. With the aid of such mirrors, researchers were able, in 2008, to produce flashes that lasted for only 80 attoseconds, in this way breaking the 100-attosecond barrier for the first time, and creating the shortest light pulses ever generated in the laboratory. In 80 attoseconds light travels a distance of less than one thousandth of a millimeter.
"Such light pulses give us the opportunity to observe the movements of electrons in atoms and molecules in real time", explains Dr. Jens Rauschenberger, a member of Ferenc Krausz's research group and managing director of the new company. "It is like using a camera. To capture a sharp image of a fast-moving object, you need very short exposure times."
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