Single light wave flashes out from fibre laser

A long-elusive goal of physics has been reached – producing a pulse of light so short that it contains just a single oscillation of a light wave.
The flashes are almost as short as a light pulse can be, according to the laws of physics. The new super-short pulses could used as flashguns to sense very small, very fast events such as a single photon interacting with a single electron, says Alfred Leitenstorfer of the University of Konstanz in Germany. A single-cycle pulse packs in energy more densely than a pulse containing more wave peaks and troughs.

Full article by Jeff Hecht on New Scientist