First author Annkatrin Sommer (MPQ) with one of the glass samples - Photo: Thorsten Naeser / MPQ
Research news - Light waves might be able to drive future transistors. The electromagnetic waves of light oscillate approximately one million times in a billionth of a second, hence at petahertz frequencies. In principle future electronics could reach this speed and become 100.000 times faster than current digital electronics. A team of the Laboratory for Attosecond Physics (LAP) at the Max-Planck Institute of Quantum Optics (MPQ), the Ludwig-Maximilians University Munich (LMU) and the Technical University of Munich (TUM) in collaboration with theorists from the University of Tsukuba have optimized the interaction of light and glass in a way that facilitates its possible future usage for light wave driven electronics. Electron movements form the basis of electronics as they enable storage, processing and transfer of information. State-of-the-art electronic circuits have reached maximum clock rates of several billion switching cycles per second, limited by the heat accumulated in the process of switching power on and off. The electric field of light changes its direction a trillion times per second and is able to move electrons in solids at this speed.
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