Scientists working in Switzerland say they've managed to capture the first-ever snapshot of light behaving as both a wave and a particle, confirming one of the founding tenets of quantum mechanics.

Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL) said light creates a stream of electrons when it hits a metal surface. Albert Einstein believed this "photoelectric" effect could be explained by the idea that light is not only a wave, but also a stream of particles.

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Past experiments have been able to observe both the particle and wave behaviors of light but never at the same time.

To obtain their findings, researchers used electrons to image the light, allowing them to capture light behaving as both a wave and a stream of particles in one single "snapshot."

They fired laser light at a metallic wire just nanometers thick. This caused the light as a wave to move back and forth along the length of the wire.

Light travels along these ultra-small wires in two possible directions, and when waves traveling in opposite directions meet, they form a new wave that looks like it's "standing in place". In this scenario, the standing wave became a light source for the experiment.

The team sent a stream of electrons close to the nanowire, which forced them to release packets of energy, known as quanta when hit by the photons.

The result is an image demonstrating the simultaneous particle nature and wave nature of light.

"This experiment demonstrates that, for the first time ever, we can film quantum mechanics -- and its paradoxical nature -- directly. Being able to image and control quantum phenomena at the nanometer scale like this opens up a new route towards quantum computing," said said Fabrizio Carbone, head of the team at EPFL.

The findings were published in the journal Nature Communications.

TagsLight, Wave, particle, Electrons, first-ever snapshot of light behaving as both a wave and a particle, quantum mechanics, nanowires, quanta, photoelectric