Very Short Pulses – from Attoseconds to Yoctoseconds!

Coincidentally I noticed a headline:

“Yoctosecond Photon Pulses from Quark-Gluon Plasmas ” [1]

Like many optic scientists I am working with femtosecond laser pulses (1fs=10^-15). Many comrades in my group are dealing with attoseconds (10^-18s). They generate them in high harmonic generation processes and can push them down to around 80as [2,3]! Near to the frontier of the zeptoseconds (10^-21s) scale. In 1as light can travel a distance of 3*10^-10m, which corresponds roughly to the length of three hydrogen atoms. Today, 80as are the limit because of physical reasons in the high harmonic generation process. But new methods are in progress to reach the zeptoseconds scale. Now, a group has proposed a method how to generated yoctoseconds; 1ys is 10^-24 seconds! They describe how high-energetic photon pulses down to the yoctosecond time scale can be produced in heavy-ion collisions, particularly during the formation of a quark-gluon plasma.
How to measure (and to produce them in reality!) and to characterize these yoctosecond pulses… future will know it. However, my comrades have enough to struggle with 80as ;).

[1] Phys. Rev. Lett. 103, 152301 (2009)
[2] Science Vol. 320, 1614
[3] Attoworld