Asia's first attosecond project launched

Chinese scientists will "see" the ultrafast particles in the microscopic world and facilitate cutting-edge research and high-tech industries, thanks to the construction of a key scientific infrastructure to generate attosecond.

The Chinese Academy of Sciences launched the Advanced Attosecond Laser Infrastructure, which includes facilities in Dongguan of Guangdong province, and Xi'an, Shaanxi province. The construction in Guangdong started on Friday.

Located in Songshan Lake Science City of Dongguan, the infrastructure is the first in Asia and the second advanced attosecond project in the world, according to Lyu Chengxi, mayor of Dongguan.

The attosecond is currently the shortest time scale that humans can grasp. And the attosecond laser is like a "super shutter" for observing the microscopic world, used to capture the "dynamic images" of extremely fast moving electrons at ultrahigh speeds, recording their motion and the quantum properties, magnetic changes, chemical reactions and material phase transitions they determine.

The AALI will be another landmark achievement of innovation development sources both for Dongguan and Guangdong province, he said at the construction launching ceremony.

It will also provide important support for promoting the construction of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area International Science and Technology Innovation Center and the GBA Comprehensive National Science Center, helping the country achieve high-level technological self-reliance and self-improvement, he added.

Lu Fangjun, director of the academy's bureau of basic science and technology capacity, said the AALI will be conducive to enhancing industries upgrades and improvement in GBA.

The infrastructure is planned to set up 10 beamlines covering wavelengths in extreme ultraviolet, soft X-ray and terahertz radiation, along with 22 research terminals, forming a comprehensive attosecond science facility.

The six beamlines that began construction in Dongguan on Friday is being constructed by the Institute of Physics of CAS, while the rest four will be built by Xi'an Institute of Optics and Precision Mechanics with the academy.

The project is planned to help build a comprehensive ultrafast electron dynamics research facility with attosecond time resolution and high spatiotemporal coherence over a period of five years to track, measure and manipulate electron motion, and explore the evolution laws of material states in depth, authorities said.

It is expected to provide key technical support for China to achieve major breakthroughs in the cutting-edge basic research field of material science.

The attosecond laser provides a new technological means for studying major scientific problems in disciplines such as physics, chemistry, materials, information and biomedical science, said Lu.

It is expected to generate new breakthroughs in basic research and industrial technology fields, and therefore has important scientific and strategic significance.

One attosecond is one-quintillionth of a second. In one second, light can circle the Earth's equator seven and a half times. However, in one attosecond, the distance light travels is only on the scale of an atom, physicists explained.

Li Yongsi contributed to this story.

zhengcaixiong@chinadaily.com.cn