King Saud University (KSU) in Riyadh has added yet another feather to its cap by opening an “Attoscience Laboratory” at the King Abdullah Institute of Nanotechnology (KAIN). The lab aims to create a proper research environment for the study of advanced laser applications in both the technical and medical fields.

Professor Abdullah Al-Zeer, supervisor of the lab, said on Thursday that the special laboratory was set up as a result of scientific cooperation between the KSU and the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich, and the Max Planck Institute for Quantum Optics in Germany.

It was inaugurated recently by KSU rector Badran Al-Omar in the presence of Nobel laureates Professor Theodor Hansch, Professor Paul B Corkum, who is also the winner of the King Faisal award in science, Gerard Moreau who is the director of Exa and Zetta Science and Technology International. Al-Omar noted at the inauguration, “that this is the foundation for a historic achievement that will be the subject of pride for our future generations.”

Commenting on the opening, Al-Azeer said that attoscience deals with study of dynamical systems on a small timescale, and added that the technology

is capable of taking pictures of fast electron movements outside of the heart of the atom (nucleus). Moreover, he explained that it is possible to alter the course of these electrons by impacting them with specially-engineered light pulses.