Pushing back the limits of optical imaging by processing trillions of frames per second

Pushing for a higher speed isn't just for athletes. Researchers, too, can achieve such feats with their discoveries. This is the case for Professor Jinyang Liang from the Institut national de la recherche scientifique (INRS) in Canada, along with colleagues from Institut Jean Lamour at the Universit de Lorraine (France) and from Huazhong University of Science and Technology (China), whose research results have recently been published in Nature Communications. The group based at INRS' nergie Mat riaux T l communications Research Centre in Canada, has developed a new ultrafast camera system that can capture up to 156.3 trillion frames per second with astonishing precision. For the first time, 2D optical imaging of ultrafast demagnetization in a single shot is possible. This new device called SCARF (for swept-coded aperture real-time femtophotography) can capture transient absorption in a semiconductor and ultrafast demagnetization of a metal alloy. This new method will help push forward the frontiers of knowledge in a wide range of fields, including modern physics, biology, chemistry, materials science, and engineering.