Researchers at the MBI have presented a novel source of extremely short electron pulses. It is a wafer-thin tip of gold, which is excited with ultrashort light pulses to send out electrons. The special conditions of the excitation process lead to an extremely short duration of the electron pulses of less than 0.02 picoseconds (20 femtoseconds), allowing the investigation of ultrafast processes in nanosystems.
More information: C. Ropers et al., Physical Review Letters, Vol. 98, 043907 (2007), Press Release.