electrons and light
Fig. 1. Max Planck and Albert Einstein v.l.
More than one hundred years ago, Joseph J. Thomson (1856-1940) discovered that atoms are not indivisible, as implied by their name, but rather they hide smaller particles with a negative charge, which he called electrons. Shortly after Albert Einstein and Max Planck recognized that light waves are made up of particles, called photons, at the beginning of the 20th century, Erwin Schrödinger figured out that electrons behave like waves in atoms. Quantum physics was born.
The following pages present the two faces of electrons and light: the wave and the particle face, as well as the way the electrons interact, thanks to their charge, with the electric and magnetic field of light. This interaction serves as a basis for attosecond physics, making light capable of revealing and steering the ultrafast motion of electrons bound to atoms
or flying at the speed of light. Additional explanations and simple formulae provide deeper insight, at the level of high-school physics.
or flying at the speed of light. Additional explanations and simple formulae provide deeper insight, at the level of high-school physics.
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