Extreme Ultraviolet Laser Challenges Einstein
Super-intense lasers can boot bunches of electrons from the inner region of atoms, according to a new study.
This extension of the photoelectric effect, in which one photon knocks one electron off the edge of an atom, could make physicists reconsider when light is a wave and when it’s a particle.
“The photoelectric effect was the most famous effect to demonstrate that light can have particle character,” said Mathias Richter of the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesansalt in Berlin, and lead author of the study published Monday in Physical Review Letters. “Now we come and say, even the photoelectric effect is better described in the wave picture of light if you apply these high intensities.”
Light has been caught kicking electrons out of atoms since the 1830s. The photoelectric effect is responsible for early video cameras, digital cameras, solar cells, night vision goggles and Albert Einstein’s Nobel Prize in Physics.
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