China's first attosecond laser device is under construction in Guangdong Province

On October 3, the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physics was announced to honor scientists who study attosecond physics, which means that mankind will enter the attosecond era. Currently, my country's first attosecond laser device, the "Advanced Attosecond Laser Facility", is under construction in Dongguan City, Guangdong Province, providing strong impetus for breakthroughs in many major basic scientific issues such as high-temperature superconductivity and quantum computing.

Nobel Prize Awarded to Attosecond Laser

On October 3, the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physics was announced.

The award was awarded to Professor Pierre Agostini of The Ohio State University in the United States, Professor Ferenc Krausz of the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics in Germany, and Anne Drone of Dron University in Sweden. Professor Anne L'Huillier for their development of experimental methods capable of generating attosecond-scale light pulses, which are used to study electron dynamics in matter.

What is "a second"?

One attosecond is 10 seconds to the power of negative 18, and is used to describe the movement of electrons inside an atom.

This year's Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded for "demonstrating a method of generating extremely short light pulses that can be used to measure the rapid processes by which electrons move or change energy."

The attosecond light pulse is a very short flash of light, which provides a camera "shutter" that opens and closes very quickly, and can "photograph" the rushing electrons.

In 2004, the attosecond stripe camera was born, allowing people to successfully capture the existence of "light".

The emergence of attosecond pulse laser is considered to be one of the most important milestones in the history of laser science. It has now become an important research method in many fields such as physics, chemistry, biology, etc., and has been successfully used to measure and control processes such as the movement of inner shell-bound electrons. , people's vision of studying the structure of matter has entered from the molecular level to the inside of atoms.

Pan Yiming, an assistant professor at the School of Physical Science and Technology at ShanghaiTech University, said in an interview with the media that through fringe photography technology, researchers can obtain attosecond pulse information, information on the movement of electrons inside the material, and information on the electric field that drives the laser pulse. "We can see 'light'. This is an attosecond ability, which cannot be replaced by other disciplines."

The scientists who invented this new tool and new technology for basic science have brought mankind into the attosecond era.

As an important part of the national innovation system, large scientific devices are an important means of promoting original innovation. Currently, my country's first advanced attosecond laser facility is currently under construction in Dongguan, Guangdong.

In the future, this facility will be built into the world's most advanced comprehensive ultra-fast electron dynamics research facility with the most complete coverage of wavebands, performance and application terminals, with attosecond time resolution as its outstanding feature.

At present, attosecond light pulses have become the most powerful tool for studying physical laws at the subatomic scale. Using this technology, transient phenomena such as lightning generation and drug dissolution can be observed.

At the same time, the development of attosecond pulse laser technology has triggered many major breakthroughs in scientific and technical research in the fields of X-rays, free electron lasers, controllable high-temperature superconductivity, ultra-high resolution imaging, and electronic information processing.

Dongguan, Guangdong has already laid out plans for this. On April 25 this year, the Attosecond Science Center was officially unveiled in Songshan Lake, Dongguan. In the future, it will promote the construction of advanced attosecond laser facilities, a large scientific device.

It is reported that the advanced attosecond laser facility was jointly built by the Institute of Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Western Institute of Optoelectronics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, with the participation of the Songshan Lake Materials Laboratory.

Through a high starting point design, the facility builds a multi-beam line station with high repetition frequency, high photon energy, high flux and extremely short pulse width, providing ultrafast coherent radiation with the shortest pulse width less than 60as and the highest photon energy up to 500eV. It will also be equipped with the construction of a corresponding application research platform. After completion, the comprehensive indicators are expected to achieve international leadership.

Feng Ji, Secretary of the Party Committee and Deputy Director of the Songshan Lake Materials Laboratory, said that after the facility is completed, it will be able to comprehensively reveal the movement of electron forms such as inner shell electrons, valence electrons, and free electrons that exist in nature from both the attosecond time scale and the nanoscale space scale. Laws and other mechanisms coupled with electrons enable the tracking, measurement and control of ultrafast electron motion, providing strong impetus for breakthroughs in many major basic scientific issues including high-temperature superconductivity, quantum computing, etc.

On April 25 this year, the Attosecond Science Center, jointly built by the Institute of Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Songshan Lake Materials Laboratory, was officially unveiled in Dongguan. The center will promote the construction of advanced attosecond laser facilities and jointly carry out and strengthen attosecond scientific research.