Scientists have achieved a groundbreaking milestone in quantum mechanics by manipulating the temporal evolution of a quantum system using extreme ultraviolet (XUV) light pulses. This remarkable breakthrough was led by Prof. Lukas Bruder from the University of Freiburg, in collaboration with 14 international research institutions, including the Politecnico di Milano, the Institute of Photonics and Nanotechnologies of the National Research Council of Milan (CNR-IFN), the Institute of Materials Workshop of the National Research Council of Trieste (CNR-IOM), the National Institute for Nuclear Physics (INFN), the National Laboratories of Frascati (Rome), and the Elettra Synchrotron in Trieste.
The team demonstrated that matter can be controlled at the atomic level by harnessing peculiar properties of XUV light. Their experiment, published in the journal Nature, enabled precise manipulation of quantum states and chemical properties of matter on ultrafast time scales. This technique was successfully tested on helium atoms, where researchers adjusted electronic energy levels and measured the resulting electron motion with unprecedented accuracy.
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