Quantcast
ZME Science
  • CoronavirusNEW
  • News
  • Environment
    • Climate
    • Animals
    • Renewable Energy
    • Eco tips
    • Environmental Issues
    • Green Living
  • Health
    • Alternative Medicine
    • Anatomy
    • Diseases
    • Genetics
    • Mind & Brain
    • Nutrition
  • Future
  • Space
  • Feature
    • Feature Post
    • Art
    • Great Pics
    • Design
    • Fossil Friday
    • AstroPicture
    • GeoPicture
    • Did you know?
    • Offbeat
  • More
    • About
    • The Team
    • Advertise
    • Contribute
    • Our stance on climate change
    • Privacy Policy
    • Contact
No Result
View All Result
ZME Science

No Result
View All Result
ZME Science
No Result
View All Result
Home Science News

World’s fastest camera captures 10 trillion frames per second

The unprecedented scale of imaging can record even the slightest changes in the behavior of light.

Tibi Puiu by Tibi Puiu
October 15, 2018
in News, Physics

Thought your iPhone’s camera can shoot sick slow-mos? Here’s something a bit more impressive.

Credit: INRS.
Credit: INRS.

Researchers at Caltech and L’Institut national de la recherche scientifique (INRS) devised the world’s fastest camera, which can shoot an incredible 10 trillion frames per second. It’s so fast that it can capture the interactions between matter and light at the nanoscale. The new camera more than doubles the number of frames per second set by the previous record holder, a device developed by researchers in Sweden.

T-CUP, officially the world’s fastest camera, is based on the ‘Compressed Ultrafast Photography’ technology. It works by combining a femtosecond streak camera and a static camera. A data acquisition technique called Radon transformation rounds up the setup.

ADVERTISEMENT

Such ultra-fast cameras will prove useful to physicists looking to probe the nature of light and how it travels. Other potential applications include medicine and engineering.

“We knew that by using only a femtosecond streak camera, the image quality would be limited. So to improve this, we added another camera that acquires a static image. Combined with the image acquired by the femtosecond streak camera, we can use what is called a Radon transformation to obtain high-quality images while recording ten trillion frames per second,” said Lihong Wang, the Bren Professor of Medical Engineering and Electrical Engineering at Caltech.

Real-time imaging of temporal focusing of a femtosecond laser pulse at 2.5 Tfps. Credit: Jinyang Liang, Liren Zhu & Lihong V. Wang.
Real-time imaging of temporal focusing of a femtosecond laser pulse at 2.5 Tfps. Credit: Jinyang Liang, Liren Zhu & Lihong V. Wang.

During a test, T-CUP captured a femtosecond (a millionth of a billionth second) laser pulse, recording 25 images which were 400 femtoseconds apart. The resolution and staggering scale involved allowed the research team to record changes in the light beam’s shape, intensity, and angle of inclination.

Get more science news like this...

Join the ZME newsletter for amazing science news, features, and exclusive scoops. More than 40,000 subscribers can't be wrong.

   

A femtosecond laser pulse passing through a beam splitter. Credit: INRS.

The level of precision obtained by the researchers is unprecedented — and they’d like to do even more! According to co-author Jinyang Liang, there are ways to increase the speed up to one quadrillion (1015) frames per second. Being able to record the behavior of light at such as scale is beyond our current technology but once it becomes reality, entirely new fields of physics could be opened up.

ADVERTISEMENT

T-CUP was described in the journal Light: Science and Applications. 

Tags: cameralight
Tibi Puiu

Tibi Puiu

Tibi is a science journalist and co-founder of ZME Science. He writes mainly about emerging tech, physics, climate, and space. In his spare time, Tibi likes to make weird music on his computer and groom felines.

Follow ZME on social media

ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT
  • Coronavirus
  • News
  • Environment
  • Health
  • Future
  • Space
  • Feature
  • More

© 2007-2019 ZME Science - Not exactly rocket science. All Rights Reserved.

No Result
View All Result
  • Coronavirus
  • News
  • Environment
    • Climate
    • Animals
    • Renewable Energy
    • Eco tips
    • Environmental Issues
    • Green Living
  • Health
    • Alternative Medicine
    • Anatomy
    • Diseases
    • Genetics
    • Mind & Brain
    • Nutrition
  • Future
  • Space
  • Feature
    • Feature Post
    • Art
    • Great Pics
    • Design
    • Fossil Friday
    • AstroPicture
    • GeoPicture
    • Did you know?
    • Offbeat
  • More
    • About
    • The Team
    • Advertise
    • Contribute
    • Our stance on climate change
    • Privacy Policy
    • Contact

© 2007-2019 ZME Science - Not exactly rocket science. All Rights Reserved.