Picosecond

unitStandard termUnits

A unit of time equal to one trillionth of a second.

A picosecond is a highly precise unit of time representing one trillionth of a second. Light travels roughly one third of a millimetre in a vacuum during this interval. Engineers and physicists use picoseconds to measure switching speeds in high-frequency transistors, laser pulse durations, and the lifetime of short-lived chemical intermediates.

Heard on the job

The signal delay across that trace is roughly forty picoseconds.