Prof. Nirit Dudovich's team at the Weizmann Institute of Science has developed a groundbreaking method that reveals how lasers change the properties of matter. Using lasers, material can be turned from opaque to transparent, or from a conductor to an insulator. However, because these changes occur at high-speed rates, on the timescale of attoseconds (one-billionth of one-billionth of a second), it has been too difficult to analyze how the change unfolds.
The researchers developed a technique to track these rapid changes using two laser beams: one with long pulses to modify the material's properties and another with extremely short attosecond pulses to measure the changes. This advancement could lead to ultrafast communications and computing, significantly increasing data transmission and processing speeds.
