Swedish film electrons

Researchers at Lund University, Sweden, are the first to ever film the movement of an electron.

Using recently developed technology the team captured the motion of the electron using extremely short flashes of intense laser light, or attosecond pulses.

Using another laser the researchers also managed to guide the electron so they could capture the collision between an electron and an atom.

‘We have long been promising the research community that we will be able to use attosecond pulses to film electrons.’ said Johan Mauritsson. ‘Now that we have succeeded, we can study how electrons behave when they collide with various objects.’

Previously electron movement could only be measured by looking at the effect of the motion.