Optical Fiber-Driven Low Energy Electron Gun For Ultrafast Streak Diffraction

Here, we present an optical fiber-based electron gun designed for the ultrafast streaking of low-energy electron bunches. The temporal profile of the few tens of the picosecond long electron bunch composed of 200 electrons is well characterized using a customized streak camera. Detailed analysis reveals that the stretched optical trigger pulse owing to the dispersion effects inside the waveguide dominantly determines the temporal length of the low density electron bunch. This result illustrates the capability to control the observable time-window in the streak diffraction experiment by tailoring geometrical parameters of the fiber source and its coupling condition. With the electrostatic Einzel lens system integrated on the fiber-based cathode, we also demonstrate spatial focusing of the electron beam with the RMS spot size of 98 mu m and imaging of the static low-energy electron diffraction pattern of monolayer graphene in the electron kinetic energy range of 1.0-2.0 keV. Published by AIP Publishing.