David Cesar, Julia Gonski and W.L. Kimmy Wu will each receive $2.75 million issued over five years for their research in X-ray and ultrafast science, new physics and primordial gravitational waves.
This novel method could shrink the equipment needed to make laser pulses billionths of a billionth of a second long for studying ultra-speedy electron movements in solids, chemical reactions and future electronics.
Called XLEAP, the new method will provide sharp views of electrons in chemical processes that take place in billionths of a billionth of a second and drive crucial aspects of life.
Less than a millionth of a billionth of a second long, attosecond X-ray pulses allow researchers to peer deep inside molecules and follow electrons as they zip around and ultimately initiate chemical reactions.
Researchers demonstrate a new ability to drive and track electronic motion, which is crucial to understanding the role of electrons in chemical processes and how quantum coherence evolves on the shortest timescales.
In an advance that could dramatically shrink particle accelerators for science and medicine, researchers used a laser to accelerate electrons at a rate 10 times higher than conventional technology in a nanostructured glass chip smaller than a grain of rice.
A single layer of tin atoms could be the world’s first material to conduct electricity with 100 percent efficiency at the temperatures that computer chips operate.
