Credit: Andrey D. Poletayev/Oxford University
A laser apparatus built by SLAC lead scientist Matthias C. Hoffmann for experiments that shook ions traveling through a solid-state battery electrolyte with a jolt of voltage. To researchers' surprise, most of the ions responded by reversing course and hopping to their previous positions before returning to their usual erratic paths -- the first indication that they remembered, in a sense, where they had been.