Supervisor: Lars Bojer Madsen

How long time does it take a particle to tunnel through a barrier? This seems like a simple question, but in the quantum world, this is harder to answer than one might expect. 

Within strong-field physics, scientists are trying to answer this question with the attoclock - a scheme for interpreting shifts in the momentum of photoelectrons emitted from atoms in elliptical laser light. While the shifts can be measured in the lab, their origin is not agreed upon, and more than a decade of contradictory results and interpretations has left the topic somewhat controversial.

In this talk, I will introduce you to the tunneling time debate and the attoclock technique used in strong-field physics. Together we will look at the most important results in the field, and get a glimpse of how experimental and theoretical physics play together when scientists are trying to answer questions that might not even make sense to ask.