Our lives are governed by submicroscopic processes in
the nanocosmos. Indeed many natural phenomena begin with a
minuscule shift in the states of atoms or molecules, triggered by
radiation. One such process has now been elucidated by a team led
by Prof. Matthias Kling and Dr. Boris Bergues at the Laboratory for
Attosecond Physics (LAP), which is jointly run by
Ludwig-Maximilians Universität (LMU) and the Max Planck Institute
of Quantum Optics (MPQ). The group studied how molecules that were
attached to the surface of nanoparticles responded to irradiation
with light. Light-induced molecular processes on nanoparticles play
an important role in atmospheric chemistry, and can ultimately
influence our climate.
