{"id":221936,"date":"2025-09-16T03:22:48","date_gmt":"2025-09-16T08:22:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/09\/ultrafast-infrared-light-pulses-trigger-rapid-breathing-in-thin-film"},"modified":"2025-09-16T03:22:48","modified_gmt":"2025-09-16T08:22:48","slug":"ultrafast-infrared-light-pulses-trigger-rapid-breathing-in-thin-film","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/09\/ultrafast-infrared-light-pulses-trigger-rapid-breathing-in-thin-film","title":{"rendered":"Ultrafast infrared light pulses trigger rapid \u2018breathing\u2019 in thin film"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/ultrafast-infrared-light-pulses-trigger-rapid-breathing-in-thin-film2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Cornell Engineering researchers have demonstrated that, by zapping a synthetic thin film with ultrafast pulses of low-frequency infrared light, they can cause its lattice to atomically expand and contract billions of times per second\u2014strain-driven \u201cbreathing\u201d that could potentially be harnessed to quickly switch a material\u2019s electronic, magnetic or optical properties on and off.<\/p>\n<p>The research was <a href=\"https:\/\/journals.aps.org\/prl\/abstract\/10.1103\/vzkw-n2bm\" target=\"_blank\">published<\/a> in <i>Physical Review Letters<\/i>. The paper\u2019s co-lead authors are former postdoctoral researcher Jakob Gollwitzer and doctoral student Jeffrey Kaaret.<\/p>\n<p>Stretching and squishing a material to induce strain is a common method to manipulate its properties, but using light for that purpose has been less studied, according to Nicole Benedek, associate professor of materials science and engineering, who co-led the project with Andrej Singer, associate professor of materials science and engineering in Cornell Engineering.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Cornell Engineering researchers have demonstrated that, by zapping a synthetic thin film with ultrafast pulses of low-frequency infrared light, they can cause its lattice to atomically expand and contract billions of times per second\u2014strain-driven \u201cbreathing\u201d that could potentially be harnessed to quickly switch a material\u2019s electronic, magnetic or optical properties on and off. The research [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38,1635],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-221936","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-engineering","category-materials"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221936","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=221936"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221936\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=221936"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=221936"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=221936"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}