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Photon-induced near-field electron microscopy

Nature volume 462, pages 902–906 (2009)Cite this article

Abstract

In materials science and biology, optical near-field microscopies enable spatial resolutions beyond the diffraction limit1,2, but they cannot provide the atomic-scale imaging capabilities of electron microscopy3. Given the nature of interactions4,5,6,7,8 between electrons and photons, and considering their connections9,10 through nanostructures, it should be possible to achieve imaging of evanescent electromagnetic fields with electron pulses when such fields are resolved in both space (nanometre and below) and time (femtosecond)11,12,13. Here we report the development of photon-induced near-field electron microscopy (PINEM), and the associated phenomena. We show that the precise spatiotemporal overlap of femtosecond single-electron packets with intense optical pulses at a nanostructure (individual carbon nanotube or silver nanowire in this instance) results in the direct absorption of integer multiples of photon quanta (nℏω) by the relativistic electrons accelerated to 200 keV. By energy-filtering only those electrons resulting from this absorption, it is possible to image directly in space the near-field electric field distribution, obtain the temporal behaviour of the field on the femtosecond timescale, and map its spatial polarization dependence. We believe that the observation of the photon-induced near-field effect in ultrafast electron microscopy demonstrates the potential for many applications, including those of direct space-time imaging of localized fields at interfaces and visualization of phenomena related to photonics, plasmonics and nanostructures.

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Figure 1: Electron energy spectra of carbon nanotubes irradiated with an intense fs laser pulse at two different delay times.
Figure 2: Photon-induced near-field electron microscopy of an individual nanotube.
Figure 3: Temporal response and polarization dependence of the imaged interfacial fields.
Figure 4: Physical depiction of the interaction between the electron, photon and the evanescent field.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Science Foundation and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research in the Gordon and Betty Moore Center for Physical Biology at the California Institute of Technology. We thank S. Skrabalak for synthesizing and providing the silver nanowires.

Author Contributions All authors contributed extensively to the work presented in this paper.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Physical Biology Center for Ultrafast Science and Technology, Arthur Amos Noyes Laboratory of Chemical Physics, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California 91125, USA ,

    Brett Barwick, David J. Flannigan & Ahmed H. Zewail

Authors
  1. Brett Barwick
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  2. David J. Flannigan
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  3. Ahmed H. Zewail
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Ahmed H. Zewail.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Supplementary Figures

This file contains Supplementary Figure 1 with Legend. (PDF 293 kb)

Supplementary Movie 1

This is a movie of photon induced near-field electron microscopy of an individual carbon nanotube, slowed down by 1012 times because of the ultrafast time recording between frames. The individual frames are the energy-filtered UEM images acquired by using only the electrons that have gained energy. (MPG 947 kb)

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Barwick, B., Flannigan, D. & Zewail, A. Photon-induced near-field electron microscopy. Nature 462, 902–906 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature08662

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