Researchers develop algorithm to make simulation of ultrafast processes possible
Wednesday, February 18, 2015 - 09:30
in Physics & Chemistry
When electronic states in materials are excited during dynamic processes, interesting phenomena such as electrical charge transfer can take place on quadrillionth-of-a-second, or femtosecond, timescales. Numerical simulations in real-time provide the best way to study these processes, but such simulations can be extremely expensive. For example, it can take a supercomputer several weeks to simulate a 10 femtosecond process. One reason for the high cost is that real-time simulations of ultrafast phenomena require "small time steps" to describe the movement of an electron, which takes place on the attosecond timescale – a thousand times faster than the femtosecond timescale.