Time Scales

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Chapter 2:
Time Scales: What is a femtosecond?Let's start with understanding the time scale in which we are working.
We need to use time units that may be unfamiliar to you. Let's get an appreciation of these very unusual time scales.

millisecond 1x10-3 second
microsecond 1x10-6 second
nanosecond 1x10-9second
picosecond 1x10-12 second
femtosecond 1x10-15 second

In other words, a femtosecond is a million times shorter than a nanosecond. Yes, that's very fast. It's "ultrafast". A femtosecond is more than a million times shorter than the several nanosecond duration pulses used in "traditional" industrial lasers micromachining systems. A million times shorter!
In the mathematician's lexicon, a femtosecond is 1x10-15 seconds.
In words, it's a quadrillionth of a second.