The photoelectric effect is the emission of electrons when electromagnetic radiation, such as light, hits a material. Electrons emitted in this manner are called photoelectrons. The phenomenon is studied in condensed matter physics, solid state, and quantum chemistry to draw inferences about the properties of atoms, molecules and solids. The effect has found use in electronic devices specialized for light detection and precisely timed electron emission.
An attosecond is a unit of time in the International System of Units (SI) equal to 10−18 or 1⁄1 000 000 000 000 000 000 of a second. An attosecond is to a second as a second is to about 31.71 billion years. The attosecond is a newly discovered "slice of time" that is tiny but has various potential applications: it can observe oscillating molecules, the chemical bonds formed by atoms in chemical reactions, and other extremely tiny and extremely fast things.
Femtochemistry is the area of physical chemistry that studies chemical reactions on extremely short timescales in order to study the very act of atoms within molecules (reactants) rearranging themselves to form new molecules (products). In a 1988 issue of the journal Science, Ahmed Hassan Zewail published an article using this term for the first time, stating "Real-time femtochemistry, that is, chemistry on the femtosecond timescale...". Later in 1999, Zewail received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his pioneering work in this field showing that it is possible to see how atoms in a molecule move during a chemical reaction with flashes of laser light.
Photoemission spectroscopy (PES), also known as photoelectron spectroscopy, refers to energy measurement of electrons emitted from solids, gases or liquids by the photoelectric effect, in order to determine the binding energies of electrons in the substance. The term refers to various techniques, depending on whether the ionization energy is provided by X-ray, XUV or UV photons. Regardless of the incident photon beam, however, all photoelectron spectroscopy revolves around the general theme of surface analysis by measuring the ejected electrons.
Coherent control is a quantum mechanics-based method for controlling dynamic processes by light. The basic principle is to control quantum interference phenomena, typically by shaping the phase of laser pulses. The basic ideas have proliferated, finding vast application in spectroscopy mass spectra, quantum information processing, laser cooling, ultracold physics and more.
Attosecond physics, also known as attophysics, or more generally attosecond science, is a branch of physics that deals with light-matter interaction phenomena wherein attosecond photon pulses are used to unravel dynamical processes in matter with unprecedented time resolution.
Angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) is an experimental technique used in condensed matter physics to probe the allowed energies and momenta of the electrons in a material, usually a crystalline solid. It is based on the photoelectric effect, in which an incoming photon of sufficient energy ejects an electron from the surface of a material. By directly measuring the kinetic energy and emission angle distributions of the emitted photoelectrons, the technique can map the electronic band structure and Fermi surfaces. ARPES is best suited for the study of one- or two-dimensional materials. It has been used by physicists to investigate high-temperature superconductors, graphene, topological materials, quantum well states, and materials exhibiting charge density waves.
The Max-Planck-Institute of Quantum Optics is a part of the Max Planck Society which operates 87 research facilities in Germany.
Inelastic electron tunneling spectroscopy (IETS) is an experimental tool for studying the vibrations of molecular adsorbates on metal oxides. It yields vibrational spectra of the adsorbates with high resolution (< 0.5 meV) and high sensitivity (< 1013 molecules are required to provide a spectrum). An additional advantage is the fact that optically forbidden transitions may be observed as well. Within IETS, an oxide layer with molecules adsorbed on it is put between two metal plates. A bias voltage is applied between the two contacts. An energy diagram of the metal-oxide-metal device under bias is shown in the top figure. The metal contacts are characterized by a constant density of states, filled up to the Fermi energy. The metals are assumed to be equal. The adsorbates are situated on the oxide material. They are represented by a single bridge electronic level, which is the upper dashed line. If the insulator is thin enough, there is a finite probability that the incident electron tunnels through the barrier. Since the energy of the electron is not changed by this process, it is an elastic process. This is shown in the left figure.
Paul Bruce Corkum is a Canadian physicist specializing in attosecond physics and laser science. He holds a joint University of Ottawa–NRC chair in attosecond photonics. He also holds academic positions at Texas A&M University and the University of New Mexico. Corkum is both a theorist and an experimentalist.
Kenji Ohmori is a Japanese physicist and chemist. National Institutes of Natural Sciences, Japan (NIMS), Institute for Molecular Science (IMS)
Quantum-optical spectroscopy is a quantum-optical generalization of laser spectroscopy where matter is excited and probed with a sequence of laser pulses.
Eleftherios Goulielmakis is a Greek physicist specializing in lasers. He is a professor of physics at the University of Rostock, Germany where he currently leads the research activities of the Extreme Photonics group. Previously, he was the head of the research group "Attoelectronics" at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics in Garching, Germany.
Anne Geneviève L'Huillier is a French physicist, and professor of atomic physics at Lund University in Sweden.
Xue Qikun is a Chinese physicist. He is a professor of Tsinghua University, Beijing. He has done much work in Condensed Matter Physics, especially on superconductors and topological insulators. In 2013, Xue was the first to achieve the quantum anomalous Hall effect (QAHE), an unusual orderly motion of electrons in a conductor, in his laboratory at Tsinghua University. Xue is a member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, vice president for research of Tsinghua University, and director of State Key Lab of Quantum Physics. In 2016, he was one of the first recipients of the new Chinese Future Science Prize for experimental discovery of high-temperature superconductivity at material interfaces and the QAHE. This award has been described as "China's Nobel Prize".
Michel Devoret is a French physicist and F. W. Beinecke Professor of Applied Physics at Yale University. He also holds a position as the Director of the Applied Physics Nanofabrication Lab at Yale. He is known for his pioneering work on macroscopic quantum tunneling, and the single-electron pump as well as in groundbreaking contributions to initiating the fields of circuit quantum electrodynamics and quantronics.
Ultrafast scanning electron microscopy (UFSEM) combines two microscopic modalities, Pump-probe microscopy and Scanning electron microscope, to gather temporal and spatial resolution phenomena. The technique uses ultrashort laser pulses for pump excitation of the material and the sample response will be detected by an Everhart-Thornley detector. Acquiring data depends mainly on formation of images by raster scan mode after pumping with short laser pulse at different delay times. The characterization of the output image will be done through the temporal resolution aspect. Thus, the idea is to exploit the shorter DeBroglie wavelength in respect to the photons which has great impact to increase the resolution about 1 nm. That technique is an up-to-date approach to study the dynamic of charge on material surfaces.
Fabrizio Carbone is an Italian and Swiss physicist and currently an Associate Professor at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL). His research focuses on the study of matter in out of equilibrium conditions using ultrafast spectroscopy, diffraction and imaging techniques. In 2015, he attracted international attention by publishing a photography of light displaying both its quantum and classical nature.
Mohammed Tharwat Hassan Arabic: محمد ثروت حسن is a professor of physics and optical sciences at the University of Arizona in the United States.
Photon-Induced Near-field Electron Microscopy (PINEM) is a variant of the Ultrafast Transmission Electron Microscopy technique and is based on the inelastic coupling between electrons and photons in presence of a surface or a nanostructure. This method allows one to investigate time-varying nanoscale electromagnetic fields in an electron microscope.
