Probing quantum optical excitations with fast electrons
Valerio Di Giulio,Mathieu Kociak,F. Javier García de Abajo +2 more
- Vol. 6, Iss: 12, pp 1524-1534
Reads0
Chats0
TLDR
In this article, the authors theoretically investigate fundamental aspects of the interaction of fast electrons with localized optical modes that are made possible by these advances and use a quantum optics description of the optical field to predict that the resulting electron spectra strongly depend on the statistics of the sample excitations (bosonic or fermionic) and their population.Abstract:
Probing optical excitations with nanometer resolution is important for understanding their dynamics and interactions down to the atomic scale. Electron microscopes currently offer the unparalleled ability of rendering spatially resolved electron spectra with combined meV and sub-nm resolution, while the use of ultrafast optical pulses enables fs temporal resolution and exposure of the electrons to ultraintense confined optical fields. Here, we theoretically investigate fundamental aspects of the interaction of fast electrons with localized optical modes that are made possible by these advances. We use a quantum optics description of the optical field to predict that the resulting electron spectra strongly depend on the statistics of the sample excitations (bosonic or fermionic) and their population (Fock, coherent, or thermal), whose autocorrelation functions are directly retrieved from the ratios of electron gain intensities. We further explore feasible experimental scenarios to probe the quantum characteristics of the sampled excitations and their populations. In particular, we present realistic simulations for electron beams interacting with optical cavities infiltrated with optically pumped quantum emitters, which we show to undergo a varied temporal evolution in the cavity mode statistics that causes radical modifications in the transmitted electron spectra depending on pump-electron delay.read more
Citations
More filters
Journal ArticleDOI
Light–matter interactions with photonic quasiparticles
Nicholas Rivera,Ido Kaminer +1 more
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors focus on the theoretical and experimental developments in realizing new light-matter interactions with photonic quasiparticles, such as room-temperature strong coupling, ultrafast ‘forbidden’ transitions in atoms and new applications of the Cherenkov effect.
Journal ArticleDOI
Coherent Interaction Between Free Electrons and a Photonic Cavity
Kangpeng Wang,Raphael Dahan,Michael Shentcis,Yaron Kauffmann,Adi Ben Hayun,Ori Reinhardt,Shai Tsesses,Ido Kaminer +7 more
TL;DR: In this paper, a platform for multidimensional nanoscale imaging and spectroscopy of free-electron interactions with photonic cavities was developed for low-dose, ultrafast electron microscopy of soft matter or other beam-sensitive materials.
Journal ArticleDOI
Controlling free electrons with optical whispering-gallery modes
Ofer Kfir,Hugo Lourenço-Martins,Gero Storeck,Murat Sivis,Tyler R. Harvey,Tobias J. Kippenberg,Armin Feist,Claus Ropers,Claus Ropers +8 more
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors couple a free-electron beam to a travelling-wave resonant cavity mode, which induces a strong phase modulation on co-propagating electrons, leading to a spectral broadening of 700 electronvolts, corresponding to the absorption and emission of hundreds of photons.
Journal ArticleDOI
Resonant phase-matching between a light wave and a free-electron wavefunction
Raphael Dahan,Saar Nehemia,Michael Shentcis,Ori Reinhardt,Yuval Adiv,Xihang Shi,Orr Be’er,Morgan H. Lynch,Yaniv Kurman,Kangpeng Wang,Ido Kaminer +10 more
TL;DR: In this article, an energy-momentum phase-matching with the extended propagating light field was shown to enable strong interactions between free electrons and light waves, which is a type of inverse-Cherenkov interaction that occurs with a quantum electron wave function.
Journal ArticleDOI
Optical Excitations with Electron Beams: Challenges and Opportunities
TL;DR: Free electron beams such as those employed in electron microscopes have evolved into powerful tools to investigate photonic nanostructures with an unrivaled combination of spatial and spectral preciseness as discussed by the authors.
References
More filters
Journal ArticleDOI
Optical Constants of the Noble Metals
P. B. Johnson,R. W. Christy +1 more
TL;DR: In this paper, the optical constants for the noble metals (copper, silver, and gold) from reflection and transmission measurements on vacuum-evaporated thin films at room temperature, in the spectral range 0.5-6.5 eV.
Journal ArticleDOI
An Introduction to Probability Theory and Its Applications.
A table of integrals
TL;DR: Basic Forms x n dx = 1 n + 1 x n+1 (1) 1 x dx = ln |x| (2) udv = uv − vdu (3) 1 ax + bdx = 1 a ln|ax + b| (4) Integrals of Rational Functions
Journal ArticleDOI
Coherent and incoherent states of the radiation field
TL;DR: In this article, the photon statistics of arbitrary fields in fully quantum-mechanical terms are discussed, and a general method of representing the density operator for the field is discussed as well as a simple formulation of a superposition law for photon fields.