Femtosecond


A femtosecond is the SI unit of time equal to 10 or of a second; that is, one quadrillionth, or one millionth of one billionth, of a second. For context, a femtosecond is to a second as a second is to about 31.71 million years; a ray of light travels approximately 0.3 μm in 1 femtosecond, a distance comparable to the diameter of a virus.
The word femtosecond is formed by the SI prefix femto and the SI unit second. Its symbol is fs.
A femtosecond is equal to 1000 attoseconds, or 1/1000 picosecond. Because the next higher SI unit is 1000 times larger, times of 10−14 and 10−13 seconds are typically expressed as tens or hundreds of femtoseconds.