Identifying new sources that produce electrons faster could help to advance the many imaging techniques that rely on electrons. In a recent paper published in Physical Review Letters, a team of researchers at Eindhoven University of Technology demonstrated the scattering of subpicosecond electron bunches from an ultracold electron source.
“Our research group is working to develop the next generation of ultrafast electron sources to push imaging techniques such as ultrafast electron diffraction to the next level,” Tim de Raadt, one of the researchers who carried out the study, told Phys.org.
“The idea of using laser-cooled ultracold gas clouds as an electron source to improve the state-of-the-art in brightness was first introduced in a paper published in 2005. Since then, research efforts have produced multiple versions of such a ultracold electron source, with the most recent one (used in this work) focusing on making the source compact, easy to align and operate, and being more stable, as described in another past paper that also studied the transverse electron beam properties.”
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