An intervention at Radio France: Electronics at the speed of light
In a study published in Nature Physics: physicists have just demonstrated a new approach to controlling electrons with light. A European team, including researchers from Paris-Saclay, has induced electrons to move on a time scale of less than a femtosecond, i.e. less than a quadrillionth of a second. At present, our electronic components – based on silicon semiconductors – are activated in picoseconds – thousands of billions of seconds – a thousand times slower than a femtosecond. For years we have been trying to conduct electricity as quickly as possible. To achieve this, researchers have used laser pulses in particular: the idea is to use the ultra-fast light pulse to control the properties of the electrons. This is fundamental research – at the heart of one of the priority themes of the PALM lab – and it will take time to be able to apply these results. However, in the long term, this could push back the current limits of computer systems.
A website on the physics of the Labex PALM
Discover all physics and physicists of PALM through a french/english website for public : www.AtomeLumiereMatiere.fr
You will find many resources to download for free : videos, posters, postcard, images, bookmarks…
The Labex also supports several actions of popularization towards the general public, which can be found on the training/dissemination page.
For example, http://toutestquantique.fr/, a set of extension tools
for the PALM labex on Themes 1 (Elementary and correlated quantum systems)
and 3 (Ultra-fast dynamics: from radiation sources to multi-scale responses).
Animated film
Labex PALM supported the production of the animated film “The Hairy Nobel”. More information