The world's fastest camera captures 10 trillion frames per second

The researchers have developed the fastest camera in the world, capable of capturing 10,000 billion images per second. This speed is thousands of times faster than conventional high speed cameras.

The new high-speed camera, called T-CUP, can literally freeze time and see incredibly fast processes, even in extremely slow light.

Many phenomena in chemistry, physics and biology have never been captured before. To be able to observe them, a camera requires a means to record images in real time at a very short time resolution. No current camera is fast enough and sensitive enough to perform this job.

Compressed high-speed photography (UPC) served as a starting point for the new high-speed camera. CUP is a dynamic imaging technique capable of capturing 100 billion frames per second. Nevertheless, it is not able to incorporate ultra-short pulses in the femtosecond range. To overcome this limitation, researchers have developed a femtosecond scanning camera that also incorporates a data acquisition system used in applications such as tomography.

"We knew that by using only a femtosecond scanning camera, the quality of the image would be limited," said Professor Lihong Wang, a Bren professor of medial engineering and electrical engineering at Caltech. "To improve this, we have added another camera that acquires a static image.In combination with the image acquired by the femtosecond scanning camera, we can use what is called a radon transformation to obtain high quality images while recording ten trillion dollars per second. "

The ultrafast camera set the world record for imaging speed by capturing in real time the temporal focus of a single femtosecond laser pulse. This process was recorded in 25 images taken at an interval of 400 femtoseconds and shows the shape, intensity and tilt angle of the light pulse with a remarkable level of detail. Speeds such as this one are very promising for studying ultra-fast and complex processes never explored before.

"It's a feat in itself," said lead author Jinyang Liang, an engineer at Caltech Optical Imaging Lab (COIL). "But we are already seeing opportunities to increase the speed up to a quadrillion (10 exp 15) frames per second!"