Speaker: Prof. Michael Zuerch (University of California, Berkeley, and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory) 

Abstract: 

How long does it take for a photoelectron to be emitted from a molecule once ionized by light? What are the frequencies and pathways of electron oscillations along a molecule's backbone under light's influence and how does this impact chemical reactions? And how swiftly do excited electrons in a material scatter, and through which routes? The advent of attosecond pulse technology, our 'ultimate stopwatch', now allows us to directly observe these fastest phenomena in nature and answer these pivotal questions. 

The journey of attosecond pulses, as fascinating as their current applications, began with the surprising discovery of high harmonic generation and its mechanistic understanding in the late 1980s to early 1990s. This was followed by over a decade of significant technological advancements, culminating in the early 2000s with the isolation of single attosecond pulses. It is these groundbreaking initial discoveries and advancements in characterizing and isolating single attosecond pulses that have been honored with the Nobel Prize in Physics 2023.

In this colloquium, I will briefly review the history of these discoveries, elucidate the underlying technologies, and introduce the foundational models and mechanisms. We will explore key results that have shaped the field of attosecond science, particularly in atomic and molecular dynamics, chemical dynamics, and materials research. In the context of applying attosecond spectroscopy to study quantum materials I will showcase some of the results from my laboratory. To conclude, I will present a forward-looking perspective on the opportunities attosecond science presents and what we might anticipate in the coming decade.