A picosecond (abbreviated as ps) is a unit of time in the International System of Units (SI) equal to 10−12 or (one trillionth) 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 approximately 31,688.76 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.
One picosecond is equal to 1000 , or 1/1000 . 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:
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1.0 picoseconds (1.0 ps) – cycle time for electromagnetic frequency 1 terahertz (THz), an inverse unit. This corresponds to a wavelength of 0.3 mm, as can be calculated by multiplying 1 ps by the speed of light (approximately 3 x 108 m/s) to determine the distance traveled. 1 THz is in the far infrared.
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1 picosecond – time taken by light in vacuum to travel approximately 0.30 mm
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1 picosecond – half-life of a bottom quark
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~1 picosecond – lifetime of a single (hydronium) ion in water at 20 °C
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picoseconds to nanoseconds – phenomena observable by dielectric spectroscopy
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1.2 picoseconds – switching time of the world's fastest transistor (845 GHz, as of 2006)
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1.7 picoseconds – rotational correlation time of water
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3.3 picoseconds (approximately) – time taken for light to travel 1 millimeter
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10 picoseconds after the Big Bang – electromagnetism separates from the other fundamental forces
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34 picoseconds – signal rise time (20% to 80%) of a SFP+ transmitter for 10 Gigabit Ethernet.
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10 to 150 picoseconds – rotational correlation times of a molecule (184 g/mol) from hot to frozen water
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100 picoseconds – Unit Interval of a 10 Gbit/s serial communication link, such as USB 3.1.
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108.7827757 picoseconds – transition time between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium-133 atom at absolute zero
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330 picoseconds (approximately) – the time it takes a common 3.0 GHz computer CPU to complete a processing cycle
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