High-speed camera records at 1 trillion frames per second

Japanese researchers have developed a new high-speed camera that can record events at a rate of more than 1 trillion frames per second - more than 1000 times faster than conventional high-speed cameras.

Called STAMP (sequentially timed all-optical mapping photography), the technology was developed by a team from an array of Japanese institutions. Team member Keiichi Nakagawa, from The University of Tokyo, experienced the need for such a camera when he was studying how acoustic shock waves changed living cells.

Scientists believe mechanical stress, like that caused by acoustic waves, might increase bone and blood vessel growth, but they had no tools for capturing the dynamics of such a fast, transient event as a shock wave passing through a cell. “Since there was no suitable technique,” Nakagawa said, “I decided to develop a new high-speed imaging technique in my doctoral program.”

STAMP utilises dispersion to split an ultrashort pulse of light into a barrage of different coloured flashes that hit the imaged object in rapid-fire succession. Each separate colour flash can then be analysed to string together a moving picture of what the object looked like over the time it took the dispersed light pulse to travel through the device.

While conventional high-speed cameras are limited by the processing speed of their mechanical and electrical components, STAMP overcomes these limitations by using only fast, optical components. The first iteration of the technology could capture up to six frames in a single shot; the team is currently working on a version that can acquire 25 sequential images, and Nakagawa believes the number of frames could eventually be increased to 100.

Nakagawa’s team has already used the technology to capture a crystal lattice being excited by a laser pulse, causing waves of jostling atoms to travel through the material at close to one-sixth the speed of light. He said the camera “holds great promise for studying a diverse range of previously unexplored complex ultrafast phenomena”, including the laser ignition of fusion, the phase transition of materials and the dynamics of a Coulomb explosion.

“I think it is important to note that there might be many potential applications of STAMP that I have not imagined,” Nakagawa concluded.

Image credit: Keiichi Nakagawa/University of Tokyo.

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