Image of the week: that’s no moon

By Thomas Farrell on November 2, 2015

But nor is it a space station. While it might bear some resemblance to a certain location from a famous film franchise, today’s Image of the Week entry is actually a visual representation of the properties of a laser pulse. The image below is a photoelectron interferogram of a polarization-shaped laser pulse, shown in a representation called an iso-sphere. The features on the sphere and the 2D projections around its sides show how the laser pulse propagates in terms of various parameters.

Photoelectron interferogram from polarization-shaped laser pulse, from P Hockett et al 2015 J. Phys. B: At. Mol. Opt. Phys. 48 214004

The image comes from a paper by researchers working in Canada and Germany, in which they study the coherent control of electron wavepackets using laser pulses. To find out more about their research and to see more images like the one above, you can read P Hockett et al 2015 J. Phys. B: At. Mol. Opt. Phys. 48 214004

Coherent control of photoelectron wavepacket angular interferograms
If you want to read more about coherent control and other research in this area, you can access our special issue Coherence and control in the quantum world

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License

Front Image and article image: Photoelectron interferogram from polarization-shaped laser pulses, from P Hockett et al 2015 J. Phys. B: At. Mol. Opt. Phys. 48 214004