Spectrometer Measures Effects of Photon Momentum in Strong-Field Ionization
FRANKFURT, Germany, Oct. 7, 2019 — Einstein received the Nobel Prize for explaining the photoelectric effect — that, simply put, a single atom is irradiated with light. Einstein believed that light consists of photons that transfer only quantized energy to the electron of an atom. If the photon’s energy is sufficient, it knocks the electrons out of the atom. But what happens to the photon’s momentum in this process? To answer the question, physicists at Goethe University constructed a new, high-resolution spectrometer called...