Electron wave-function interacting with nanostructures : Beam shaping, few-photon sources, and novel spectroscopy techniques

Abstract
Electromagnetic interaction of electron beams with light and materials is the basis for many fields of science: accelerators, X-ray sources, electron microscopy, diffraction, and time resolved spectroscopy. Despite undergoing a tremendous impetus within recent decades, mainly due to the advent of off-line electron holography and 4-dimensional electron microscopy, still electron-based characterization and spectroscopy techniques are far from competing with optical methodologies. Considering the theoretical side, this is mainly due to the fact that Maxwell’s equations were introduced more than half a century before Schrödinger equations.

In this talk, interaction of the electrons with nanostructures will be theoretically investigated, from the point of view of self-consistent analyses. It will be shown that, particle-in-cell simulations based on Maxwell and Lorentz equations are indeed able to demonstrate many aspects of electron acceleration and deflection in interactions of electrons with nanostructures and light [1, 2]. However, pure quantum aspects such as Kapitza-Dirac effects, shaping of single-electron wave packets, and emissions of photons from bunched wave functions should be investigated using a self-consistent combination of Maxwell and Schrödinger equations [3]. Based on these investigations, a novel time-resolved spectroscopy technique will be also introduced in this talk, with the promise of pushing the electron-based characterization techniques into the attosecond arena [4].

References
[1] J. P. Verboncoeur, “Particle simulation of plasmas: review and advances,” Plasma Phys. Controlled Fusion 47, A231 (2005).
[2] N. Talebi, W. Sigle, R. Vogelgesang, P. van Aken, “Numerical simulations of interference effects in photon-assisted electron energy-loss spectroscopy,” New J. Phys. 15, 053013 (2013).
[3] N. Talebi, “Schroedinger electrons interacting with optical gratings: quantum mechanical study of the inverse Smith Purcell effect,” New J. Phys. 18, 123006 (2016).
[4] N. Talebi, “Spectral interferometry with electron microscopes,” Sci. Rep. 6, 33874 (2016).