Capturing Electrons to Study Human Health: Prof. Dr. Ferenc Krausz’s Vision

On November 13, 2024, during DESY Day, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Prof. Dr. Ferenc Krausz delivered a fascinating talk titled “Capturing Electrons to Study Human Health.” His groundbreaking work in attosecond science is breaking barriers, offering new ways to observe and control the intricate dynamics of the tiniest particles in the universe revolutionizing science, technology, and medicine.

What is Attosecond Photography?

At the dawn of the millennium, attosecond photography marked a paradigm shift in how we explore the natural world. This cutting-edge technique allows scientists to capture the motion of electrons on an attosecond scale one-billionth of a billionth of a second. By precisely controlling the oscillating electric field of light, researchers can achieve an unprecedented level of clarity, both in time and space.

For the first time, quantum and classical phenomena once hidden from view are directly observable. Movements of electrons during chemical reactions or quantum transitions, which were previously beyond imagination, can now be captured as if they’re unfolding in slow motion.

Why Does This Matter?

This transformative capability is opening doors to innovations that could reshape multiple fields, including:

Ultra-Fast Electronics: Devices powered by attosecond precision could be hundreds of thousands of times faster than current technology, heralding a new era in computing, communication, and data processing.
Health Monitoring: Attosecond science could revolutionize medicine by offering the ability to study biological processes at their most fundamental level. This could lead to affordable, precise health monitoring tools, enabling early disease detection and personalized treatments.

A Vision for the Future:

As Prof. Krausz emphasized, the 21st century is witnessing a powerful convergence of fundamental research and real-world applications. Attosecond science is not just about understanding the nature of matter; it’s about leveraging that understanding to improve human lives. His talk reminded us that by capturing the behaviour of electrons, we’re not only exploring the building blocks of the universe but also laying the groundwork for innovations that promise a brighter, healthier, and more connected future. Prof. Krausz’s vision serves as a testament to the transformative power of science in driving progress and inspiring change.

Inspired by Ferenc Krausz’s DESY Day lecture, Class 5 Photonics GmbH is proud to support the next wave of breakthroughs in attosecond science. As Krausz’s vision of attosecond photography opens new doors in science and medicine, our high-power femtosecond lasers provide the precision and robustness necessary for advanced applications like high-harmonic generation, soft-X-ray spectroscopy, and attomicroscopy.

Image sourced from the Nobel article “Making Optical Waves, Tracing Electrons in Real-Time: The Onset of the Attosecond Realm,” published in Progress In Electromagnetics Research, Vol. 147, pages 127–140, in 2014 : ‘Attosecond streaking technique and its basic elements. (a) Principles of attosecond light sampling based on the attosecond streaking technique. A synthesized light transient E_TR(t), along with a synchronized attosecond EUV pulse, is focused into an atomic gas target. The EUV pulse knocks electrons free by photoionization at an instance t_r . The ﬁeld of light E_TR (t > t_r) imparts a momentum change ∆pt_r (black arrows) to the freed electrons, which scales as the instantaneous value of the vector potential A_TR (t_r) at the moment of release. The momentum change is recorded by an electron time- of-ﬂight detector, placed along the direction of the linearly polarized E_TR(t). (b) Schematic diagram of the experimental setup for sampling synthesized light ﬁeld transients(see text for details). (c) The ﬁrst attosecond streaking spectrogram of a few-cycle light wave [39]. (d) Retrieved temporal intensity proﬁle and spectral phase of the EUV pulse.’

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Capturing Electrons to Study Human Health: Prof. Dr. Ferenc Krausz’s Vision

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