Contact: Ferenc Krausz
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Max-Planck-Gesellschaft

Laser Pulse Electrical Field

Caption: Figure 2: The electrical field of a laser pulse exerts a strong force on an electron located at the edge of an atom (green cloud around the nucleus).This force changes over time. In approximately only a femtosecond, a trillionth of a second, it changes direction -- at t1 it is strongest towards the right, at t2 it is strongest towards the left and after another femtosecond, at t3, again towards the right.

Credit: Max Planck Institute for Quantum Optics

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