Credit: Image courtesy of Kapteyn/Murnane Group and Steve Burrows, Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics and the Cohen Group, Technion University
This artistically enhanced depiction shows an atom being hit by a strong rosette-shaped laser field (purple), ripping an electron (green) from the parent atom that then re-collides with the atom. The result is the emission of bright, circularly polarized light at extreme ultraviolet wavelengths (blue) that can be used to measure the magnetic and electronic structure of materials with ultrafast resolution.