Using the physics equivalent of the strobe photography that captures every twitch of a cheetah in full sprint, researchers have used ultrafast spectroscopy to visualize electrons interacting as a hidden state of matter in a superconductive alloy.
It takes intense, single-cycle pulses of photons -- flashes -- hitting the cooled alloy at terahertz speed -- trillions of cycles per second -- to switch on this hidden state of matter by modifying quantum interactions down at the atomic and subatomic levels.
And then it takes a second terahertz light to trigger an ultrafast camera to take images of the state of matter that, when fully understood and tuned, could one day have implications for faster, heat-free, quantum computing, information storage and communication.
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