A laser pulse hits a tungsten surface on which iodine atoms have been depositied. Both the tungsten atoms and the iodine atoms lose electrons, which can then be measured.
Credit: TU Wien
Quantum jumps are usually regarded to be instantaneous. However, new measurement methods are so precise that it has now become possible to observe such a process and to measure its duration precisely – for example the famous ‘photoelectric effect’, first described by Albert Einstein.
It was one of the crucial experiments in quantum physics: when light falls on certain materials, electrons are released from the surface. Albert Einstein was the first to explain this phenomenon in 1905, when he spoke of “light quanta” – the smallest units of light that we call photons today.
In tiny fractions of a second, an e...
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