PSI Center for Photon Science

Quantum events can unfold on attosecond timescales, making them notoriously difficult to measure. Researchers have now devised a way to measure the duration of quantum transitions without relying on an external clock. © EPFL 2026/iStock (bymuratdeniz)

Measuring time at the quantum level

Physicists using the Swiss Light Source SLS have found a way to measure the time involved in quantum events and found it depends on the symmetry of the material.

A vitamin B12 chromophore within the bacterial photoreceptor CarH is activated by an intense pulse of visible laser light and following structural changes visualized in real time by serial femtosecond crystallography at the SwissFEL Cristallina endstation. © CEA-Irig/IBS/M. Davila

13.02.2026

•Health Innovation

•4 min

Filming a vitamin B12 photoreceptor in action

SwissFEL shows the molecular events that occur when a vitamin B12 photoreceptor absorbs light

False-coloured optical image of the quantum chip used in the experiment. The structures on the chip form a network of quantum bits that allowed researchers at PSI and ETH Zurich to perform quantum operations while correcting errors. © Quantum Device Lab/ETH Zurich, published in Nature Physics

05.02.2026

•Future Technologies

•7 min

Surgery for quantum bits

Researchers show how quantum operations can be carried out while actively correcting errors – a key step toward reliable quantum computers.

15.01.2026

•Large research facilities

•9 min

Swiss X-ray laser reveals the hidden dance of electrons

New X-ray technique at SwissFEL shows how electrons act together – with the potential to show why quantum information slips so easily away.

The intense beams of X-ray light at the user facilities operated by the PSI Center for Photon Science shed light on the smallest structures of matter.

More about us

Lab News & Scientific Highlights

12.01.2026

•Large research facilities

•8 min

X-raying auditory ossicles – a new technique reveals structures in record time

SLS Biology Medical Science

Using a bone, PSI researchers have demonstrated how the structures of biological materials can be determined on scales from nanometres to millimetres in a very short time.

Sketch of reciprocal space showing regions where opposite-handed chiral phonons exist in LiNbO3, which can be probed by circularly polarized x-ray photons in a resonant inelastic x-ray scattering.

05.01.2026

•Future Technologies

Chiral phonons in polar LiNbO₃

Materials research

Resonant inelastic x-ray scattering reveals that lattice vibrations can be chiral in a polar material, with phonons having opposite handedness depending on their direction in momentum space.