The shortest electron pulse ever created lasts only 53 attoseconds.

A record-breaking pulse of electrons was generated, lasting only 53 billionths of a billionth of a second – so fast that it could allow microscopes to capture images of electrons hopping between atoms.

The researchers broke the record for the shortest electron pulse ever created, creating a signal that lasted just 53 attoseconds—or 53 billionths of a billionth of a second. The achievement could lead to even more precise electron microscopes that can capture sharp, still images at the atomic level, rather than just blurring. It can also speed up data transfer in computer chips.

Electron pulses are used to represent data inside computers or to capture images in electron microscopes. The shorter the pulses, the higher the rate at which information can be transmitted.

Eleftherios Gulielmakis of the University of Rostock in Germany and his colleagues have been working to keep these pulses as short as possible.

The momenta of electrons produced by electric fields within conventional circuits is limited by the frequency at which electrons can oscillate within matter. Guglielmakis says that the pulse must last at least half a cycle of these oscillations, because it is this cycle that creates a “pushing force” for the electrons.

Light oscillates at a much higher frequency, so his team used a brief burst of light to trigger a pulse of electrons.

In 2016, Gulielmakis’ team created a flash of visible light that lasted just 380 attoseconds. Using the same technique, the team has now focused lasers to knock electrons off the tip of a tungsten needle into a vacuum.

The 53 attosecond pulse of electrons they discovered was even shorter than the light pulse that initiated it. Guglielmakis says that in Bohr’s model of the hydrogen atom, it lasted a fifth of the time it takes for an electron in a hydrogen atom to revolve around its nucleus.

Such a short pulse of electrons could allow electron microscopes to focus for a shorter period of time, similar to slowing down a camera shutter, to more clearly reveal particle motion.

“Sometimes [in electron microscope images] you can see that the atoms are not very limited, they are a little blurry. It’s not necessarily that they don’t have good resolution, it’s because the electron is not sitting still at a certain point, right? It’s just creating a cloud around the atoms. The attosecond electron pulse will help make the resolution fast enough to capture the electrons in motion.”

“If we create electron microscopes using our attosecond electron pulses, then we will have enough resolution not only to see atoms in motion, which would already be spectacular, but even to see how electrons jump between these atoms. “, says Gulielmakis.