ABSTRACT
The high-speed photographic work of Harold Edgerton allowed for the study of nature on a timescale never before possible. The ability to “freeze” time allowed for a completely new way to study macroscopic phenomena. A similar but more profound paradigm shift in scientic study occurred with the advent of mode-locked lasers. In this case, the laser pulses themselves are used as “high-speed cameras” to gather information about carrier relaxation dynamics (Chemla and Shah, 2000) and other molecular processes.
