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This book explores recent developments and advances in femtosecond beam science, making these more accessible through contributions from leaders in the field. Each contribution aims to make the particular area of femtosecond beam science accessible through explaining the particular field, reviewing recent advances worldwide, and featuring important results and possible future uses of femtosecond pulses in the field.

Femtosecond beam science is expected to lead to the development of technology realizing dynamic microscopy, that is, the visualization of atomic motions, chemical reactions, protein dynamics and other microscopic dynamics. Advances have enabled the visualizations of phonons, thermal expansion and shock-wave propagation by advanced time-resolved X-ray diffraction, at a time resolution of 10 picoseconds. These achievements will extend to the development of femtosecond X-ray sources and fourth generation synchrotron light sources. Dynamic microscopy promises to be one of the most important issues in dynamic nanotechnology in the future. As a result, the overview of femtosecond beam science provided by this book will be useful.