Spatial coherence of electron bunches extracted from an arbitrarily shaped cold atom electron source

• Published in: Optics express Vol. 20; no. 4; pp. 3967 - 3974
• Main Authors: Saliba, Sebastian D, Putkunz, Corey T, Sheludko, David V, McCulloch, Andrew J, Nugent, Keith A, Scholten, Robert E
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States 13-02-2012
• ISSN: 1094-4087; 1094-4087
• DOI: 10.1364/oe.20.003967

We describe the spatial coherence properties of a cold atom electron source in the framework of a quasihomogeneous wavefield. The model is used as the basis for direct measurements of the transverse spatial coherence length of electron bunches extracted from a cold atom electron source. The coherence length is determined from the measured visibility of a propagated electron distribution with a sinusoidal profile of variable spatial frequency. The electron distribution was controlled via the intensity profile of an atomic excitation laser beam patterned with a spatial light modulator. We measure a lower limit to the coherence length at the source of lc = 7.8 ± 0.9 nm.