Picosecond

A picosecond is an SI unit of time equal to 10⁻¹² or ¹/_{1,000,000,000,000} of a second. That is one trillionth, or one millionth of one millionth of a second, or 0.000 000 000 001 seconds. A picosecond is to one second as one second is to 31,710 years. Multiple technical approaches achieve imaging within single digit picoseconds. For example the Streak camera or intensified CCD (ICCD) cameras are able to picture the motion of light.

The name is formed by the SI prefix pico and the SI unit second. It is abbreviated as ps.

One picosecond is equal to 1000 femtoseconds, or 1/1000 nanosecond. Because the next SI unit is 1000 times larger, measurements of 10⁻¹¹ and 10⁻¹⁰ second are typically expressed as tens or hundreds of picoseconds. Some notable measurements in this range include: