Dual personality of light caught on camera
Is it a wave or is it a particle? We might know the answer, (Spoiler alert: it’s both!) but it is reassuring nonetheless to see the pictures that prove it, says Nina Notman
For over a century, it has been known that light can simultaneously behave as a wave and a particle, but, until now, no one has ever caught it in the act. Light has been observed many times spread out over a succession of crests and troughs in a wave-like manner and just as many times localised within a very tiny area, as if it were a particle. However, an image of it behaving in both forms simultaneously has proven elusive.
A team of researchers led by Fabrizio Carbone at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne have now successfully photographed light’s dual behaviour using an ultrafast, energy-filtered, transmission electron microscope. Only two of these instruments exist in the world.
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