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posted by martyb on Wednesday September 27 2017, @04:28PM   Printer-friendly
from the bright-idea dept.

https://www.fau.eu/2017/09/25/news/research/the-fastest-light-driven-current-source/

Controlling electronic current is essential to modern electronics, as data and signals are transferred by streams of electrons which are controlled at high speed. Demands on transmission speeds are also increasing as technology develops. Scientists from the Chair of Laser Physics and the Chair of Applied Physics at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU) have succeeded in switching on a current with a desired direction in graphene using a single laser pulse within a femtosecond ­­ – a femtosecond corresponds to the millionth part of a billionth of a second. This is more than a thousand times faster compared to the most efficient transistors today.

[...] For their experiments, the scientists fired extremely short laser pulses with specially engineered waveforms onto graphene. When these light waves hit the graphene, the electrons inside were hurled in one direction, like a whiplash. 'Under intense optical fields, a current was generated within a fraction of an optical cycle – a half femtosecond. It was surprising that despite these enormous forces, quantum mechanics still plays a key role,' explains Dr. Takuya Higuchi from the Chair of Laser Physics, the first author of the publication.

Light-field-driven currents in graphene (DOI: 10.1038/nature23900) (DX)


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 27 2017, @11:42PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 27 2017, @11:42PM (#574098)
    I suppose that since they had such large forces and large objects involved, they were expecting a classical approximation to work reasonably well. Apparently not, and they had to do the full quantum treatment.