{"id":223203,"date":"2025-10-10T05:17:26","date_gmt":"2025-10-10T10:17:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/10\/ultrafast-laser-pulses-reveal-solid-state-bandgaps-in-motion"},"modified":"2025-10-10T05:17:26","modified_gmt":"2025-10-10T10:17:26","slug":"ultrafast-laser-pulses-reveal-solid-state-bandgaps-in-motion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/10\/ultrafast-laser-pulses-reveal-solid-state-bandgaps-in-motion","title":{"rendered":"Ultrafast laser pulses reveal solid-state bandgaps in motion"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/ultrafast-laser-pulses-reveal-solid-state-bandgaps-in-motion2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The bandgap, i.e. the energy gap between the highest lying valence and the lowest lying conduction band, is a defining property of insulating solids, governing how they absorb light and conduct electricity. Tracking how a bandgap changes under strong laser excitation has been a long-standing challenge, since the underlying processes unfold on femtosecond timescales and are difficult to track directly, especially for wide-bandgap dielectrics.<\/p>\n<p>In a <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/collaboration\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">collaboration<\/a> between the Max-Born-Institute, ARCNL Amsterdam, and Aarhus University, researchers have now shown that extreme ultraviolet (XUV) high-harmonic interferometry can provide direct access to such dynamics.<\/p>\n<p>Using pairs of phase-locked near-infrared laser pulses, the team measured <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/interference+fringes\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">interference fringes<\/a> and their intensity-dependent shift in the generated high-order harmonics from silica glass (SiO<sub>2<\/sub>) and magnesium oxide (MgO).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The bandgap, i.e. the energy gap between the highest lying valence and the lowest lying conduction band, is a defining property of insulating solids, governing how they absorb light and conduct electricity. Tracking how a bandgap changes under strong laser excitation has been a long-standing challenge, since the underlying processes unfold on femtosecond timescales and [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-223203","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-futurism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223203","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=223203"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223203\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=223203"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=223203"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=223203"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}