Wave new world

摘要

Ferenc krausz's picture looks just the way you might draw a light wave - a brief wiggle on a dark background, with an ethereal, transient quality to it. But it becomes all the more impressive when you realise it isn't a drawing of a light wave. It is the first ever photograph of one. The photo was published last August to surprisingly little fanfare, considering that Hungarian-born Krausz is already a scientific celebrity for work on ultra-fast lasers. Yet he says this picture probably represents the most profound scientific achievement of his life, for one simple reason: "This is the most direct experimental evidence for light being an electromagnetic wave," he says.