| Resolution taken to the extreme: Using a combination of ultrashort laser pulses (red) and a scanning tunnelling microscope, researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research are filming processes in the quantum world. They focus the laser flashes on the tiny gap between the tip of the microscope and the sample surface, thus solving the tunneling process in which electrons (blue) overcome the gap between the tip and the sample. In this way, they achieve a temporal resolution of several hundred attoseconds when they image quantum processes such as an electronic wave packet (coloured wave) with atomic spatial resolution. Credit: Dr. Christian Hackenberger.
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