Using pulses of laser light measuring mere quintillionths of a second, an international team of scientists has probed the motion of an atom’s outermost electrons in real time. Their methods promise a broad new way to examine how atoms in physical, biological, and chemical systems bond with other atoms to form molecules or crystal structures, and how these bonds break and reform during chemical reactions.

Understanding how to create artificial photosynthesis, or tough, flexible high-temperature superconductors, or better solar cells, or a myriad other advances, will only be possible when we have the ability to image electrons by freezing time within a few quintillionths of a second. A leader in attosecond science tells how it’s done.

From their humble beginnings as offshoots of the ordinary electric light bulb, particle accelerators have evolved in surprising directions. Among the most productive and promising developments have been light sources, first in the form of electron storage rings — of which the Advanced Light Source is the world’s premier source of soft x-rays — and increasingly as versatile and sophisticated free electron lasers, the next generation of light sources now being studied at Berkeley Lab.

Berkeley Lab scientists delivered more than 100 presentations at the American Chemical Society’s Spring 2009 national meeting in Salt Lake City which took place March 22-29, 2009