Scientists develop camera that captures trillion frames per second

Japanese researchers have developed a high-speed camera that can capture events at over a trillion frames per second. The resolution is 450×450 pixels. That’s more than a thousand times faster than conventional high-speed cameras.

The research is published in the journal Nature Photonics. The new technology is called Stamp, or Sequentially Timed All-optical Mapping Photography. Normal high-speed optical cameras are slowed down by ‘slow’ mechanical and electrical components, The Optical Society writes on its site. At Stamp almost only optical components are used.

Stamp works by scattering light. The camera splits an ultra-short pulse of light into different colors that then arrive at the object to be filmed at a slightly later time and hit it in quick succession. Each split color can then be put back together later to make a movie of an object.

The maximum number of frames that the first version of Stamp could record in a row was six. Now it is possible to record 25 images in succession. The lead researcher Keiichi Nakagawa thinks this can be stretched to 100 images with current technology.

There is a drawback to using different colors to capture images: the optical properties of the object or phenomenon to be captured must not change within the wavelengths used by Stamp. Capturing wave movements that have the same frequency as light, for example, can cause problems.

Despite these limitations, the team has already applied the technique to vibrations in a lithium niobate crystal and how a laser focused on a piece of glass formed a hot, rapidly expanding plasma. The researchers believe that many ultra-fast phenomena can be captured this way for the first time, despite the limitations.