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How Long Does a Quantum Jump Take?

posted by mrpg on Saturday September 22 2018, @03:59PM   
from the read-and-find-out dept.

Bytram (from IRC) writes:

How long does a quantum jump take?

It was one of the crucial experiments in quantum physics: when light falls on certain materials, electrons are released from the surface. Albert Einstein was the first to explain this phenomenon in 1905, when he spoke of "light quanta" -- the smallest units of light that we call photons today.

In tiny fractions of a second, an electron of the material absorbs a photon, "jumps" into another state and leaves the surface. This "photoelectric effect" is so fast that until now it has mostly been regarded as instantaneous -- as a sudden change of state, from one moment to the next. However, new measurement methods are so precise that it has now become possible to observe such a process and to measure its duration precisely. A team from the Vienna University of Technology, together with research groups from Garching, Munich and Berlin, determined the duration of the photoelectric effect at a tungsten surface. The results were published in the journal Nature.

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Original Submission

• The duration The duration (Score: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 22 2018, @04:27PM (1 child)

  by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 22 2018, @04:27PM (#738581)

  The article sez: in tungsten, it takes 45 attoseconds for the outermost electrons and 100 attoseconds for the innermost.

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• Re:The duration (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 22 2018, @06:48PM

  by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 22 2018, @06:48PM (#738618)

  So about 8x10^26 plank times?

  And is this the time that it takes, or the time it takes to measure?

  Parent