Abstract
Cold atom electron and ion sources produce electron bunches and ion beams by photoionisation of laser cooled atoms. They offer high coherence and the potential for high brightness, with applications including ultrafast electron diffractive imaging of dynamic processes at the nanoscale. Here we present our cold atom electron/ion source, with an electron temperature of less than 10 K and a transverse coherence length of 10 nm. We also discuss experiments investigating space-charge effects with ions and the production of ultra-fast electron bunches using a femto-second laser. In the latter experiment we show that it is possible to produce both cold and fast electron bunches with our source.
Highlights
Being able to image the dynamics of atomic-scale processes and produce a “molecular movie” is the ultimate goal of x-ray and electron imaging [1]
The electron temperature is much higher than the cold atom temperature (70 μK) due to intrinsic heating processes encountered during ionisation, such as disorder-induced heating
We have presented our cold atom electron/ion source, including characterisation of the electron temperature and coherence length
Summary
E. Scholten High-coherence electron and ion bunches from laser-cooled atoms Proceedings of the 28th International Conference on Photonic, Electronic and Atomic Collisions (ICPEAC XXVIII), as published in Journal of Physics: Conference Series, 2013 / vol.488, iss.SECTION 1, pp.012045-1-012045-7.
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