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Reply to: On yoctosecond science

Nature volume 608, pages E18–E19 (2022)Cite this article

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The Original Article was published on 10 August 2022

replying to: Y. Shvyd’ko & P. Schindelmann Nature https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-022-04870-3 (2022)

In the associated Comment1, Shvyd’ko and Schindelmann raise concerns about our recent publications in Nature2 and Science Advances3, and suggest that our use of the notions of zeptoseconds2,3 and yoctoseconds3 is inappropriate. Here we resolve all concerns and, in particular, show how these timescales enter our experiments as relative delays between X-ray fields and their corresponding delay stabilities, not as pulses with an absolute duration of zeptoseconds. We also explain how we used suitably delayed X-rays to control the quantum dynamics of Mössbauer nuclei.

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Fig. 1: Schematic illustration of the previously published experiment.

References

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Max-Planck-Institut für Kernphysik, Heidelberg, Germany

    Kilian P. Heeg, Christian Ott, Dominik Lentrodt, Christoph H. Keitel, Thomas Pfeifer & Jörg Evers

  2. Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron DESY, Hamburg, Germany

    Lars Bocklage, Cornelius Strohm, Hans-Christian Wille, Jakob Gollwitzer, Christian F. Adolff, Kai Schlage, Ilya Sergeev, Olaf Leupold & Ralf Röhlsberger

  3. The Hamburg Centre for Ultrafast Imaging, Hamburg, Germany

    Lars Bocklage, Christian F. Adolff & Guido Meier

  4. Lehrstuhl Quantenoptik, Department Physik, Fakultät IV, Universität Siegen, Siegen, Germany

    Johann Haber

  5. ESRF-The European Synchrotron, CS40220, Grenoble, France

    Rudolf Rüffer

  6. Max-Planck Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter, Hamburg, Germany

    Guido Meier

  7. Helmholtz-Institut Jena, Jena, Germany

    Ralf Röhlsberger

  8. Institut für Optik und Quantenelektronik, Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena, Jena, Germany

    Ralf Röhlsberger

Authors
  1. Kilian P. Heeg
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  2. Lars Bocklage
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  4. Christian Ott
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  5. Dominik Lentrodt
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  6. Johann Haber
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  7. Hans-Christian Wille
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  9. Jakob Gollwitzer
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  10. Christian F. Adolff
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  11. Kai Schlage
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  13. Olaf Leupold
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  14. Guido Meier
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  15. Christoph H. Keitel
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  16. Ralf Röhlsberger
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  17. Thomas Pfeifer
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  18. Jörg Evers
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Contributions

J.E. drafted the initial manuscript with input from L.B., C.H.K., G.M., R. Röhlsberger and T.P. All authors discussed and edited the paper. The author list comprises the authors of both ref. 2 and ref. 3 as both studies are referred to in ref. 1.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jörg Evers.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Heeg, K.P., Bocklage, L., Strohm, C. et al. Reply to: On yoctosecond science. Nature 608, E18–E19 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-022-04871-2

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