femtosecond
noun
fem·to·sec·ond ˈfem(p)-tə-ˌse-kənd 
-kənt,
-tō-
: one quadrillionth of a second
Example Sentences
Recent Examples on the Web One evening while working in the lab, Du accidentally lifted his goggles while aligning the mirrors of a femtosecond laser, then a very new type of laser that emitted an extremely short pulse of light. 
Katie Hunt, CNN, 14 Sep. 2022 Developed during the 1990s, the technique uses ultra-short laser pulses—a femtosecond is one-millionth of a billionth of a second—which produces no heat to cut into a surface of an object. Bryan Hood, Robb Report, 23 Nov. 2021 An encounter of a PBH with a human body would represent a collision of an invisible relic from the first femtosecond after the big bang with an intelligent body—a pinnacle of complex chemistry made 13.8 billion years later. Avi Loeb, Scientific American, 6 June 2021 Ultrashort lasers produce pulses with a duration measured in femtoseconds (a femtosecond is 10-15 or a million-billionth of a second), and while their overall energy may be small, the power level for that brief duration is extremely high. David Hambling, Forbes, 11 Mar. 2021 For context, 1 terawatt is 1 trillion watts, while 1 femtosecond is the equivalent of 1 quadrillionth of a second. Kyle Mizokami, Popular Mechanics, 24 Feb. 2021 Zewail, who would go on to win a Nobel Prize for his research, measured these miniscule changes in femtoseconds; a femtosecond is one millionth of a billionth of a second. NBC News, 19 Oct. 2020 During the late 1980s and early 1990s, however, the pulse durations were brought down to as little as a few femtoseconds (a femtosecond is equal to 10–15 second), approaching the time frame of atomic motions. Quanta Magazine, 30 Sep. 2020 For this solar purifier, the scientists treated aluminum sheeting using a treatment of femtosecond-long—a quadrillionth of a second—laser pulses. Caroline Delbert, Popular Mechanics, 15 July 2020 See More
Katie Hunt, CNN, 14 Sep. 2022 Developed during the 1990s, the technique uses ultra-short laser pulses—a femtosecond is one-millionth of a billionth of a second—which produces no heat to cut into a surface of an object. Bryan Hood, Robb Report, 23 Nov. 2021 An encounter of a PBH with a human body would represent a collision of an invisible relic from the first femtosecond after the big bang with an intelligent body—a pinnacle of complex chemistry made 13.8 billion years later. Avi Loeb, Scientific American, 6 June 2021 Ultrashort lasers produce pulses with a duration measured in femtoseconds (a femtosecond is 10-15 or a million-billionth of a second), and while their overall energy may be small, the power level for that brief duration is extremely high. David Hambling, Forbes, 11 Mar. 2021 For context, 1 terawatt is 1 trillion watts, while 1 femtosecond is the equivalent of 1 quadrillionth of a second. Kyle Mizokami, Popular Mechanics, 24 Feb. 2021 Zewail, who would go on to win a Nobel Prize for his research, measured these miniscule changes in femtoseconds; a femtosecond is one millionth of a billionth of a second. NBC News, 19 Oct. 2020 During the late 1980s and early 1990s, however, the pulse durations were brought down to as little as a few femtoseconds (a femtosecond is equal to 10–15 second), approaching the time frame of atomic motions. Quanta Magazine, 30 Sep. 2020 For this solar purifier, the scientists treated aluminum sheeting using a treatment of femtosecond-long—a quadrillionth of a second—laser pulses. Caroline Delbert, Popular Mechanics, 15 July 2020 See More Word History
First Known Use
1976, in the meaning defined above