An attoclock maps tunnelling to electron angle. What is easiest to misread?

Answer: Angle-to-time mapping

Camera shutter lag — A camera shutter is far too slow for attosecond physics, but attoclocks do not work by filming an electron frame by frame. They encode timing into momentum angle, optical phase, or emitted light. The weakness is not ordinary shutter lag; it is deciding how much of the angle came from tunnelling versus later forces.

Angle-to-time mapping ✓ — Correct. Attoclocks infer timing from an angle or optical phase, so the hard part is calibration: the outgoing electron also feels the atom's Coulomb pull and wavepacket reshaping. Nature Physics describes delay as only one feature of richer tunnelling dynamics. A clock precise to attoseconds can still be model-dependent.

Laser intensity drift — Laser intensity drift is a real calibration worry, and strong-field experiments work hard to control it. But the deeper attoclock risk is conceptual: the measured angle also contains Coulomb and wavepacket effects. Even with stable laser power, translating an angle into a tunnelling time needs a model.