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Production and application of electron vortex beams

Nature volume 467, pages 301–304 (2010)Cite this article

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Abstract

Vortex beams (also known as beams with a phase singularity) consist of spiralling wavefronts that give rise to angular momentum around the propagation direction. Vortex photon beams are widely used in applications such as optical tweezers to manipulate micrometre-sized particles and in micro-motors to provide angular momentum1,2, improving channel capacity in optical3 and radio-wave4 information transfer, astrophysics5 and so on6. Very recently, an experimental realization of vortex beams formed of electrons was demonstrated7. Here we describe the creation of vortex electron beams, making use of a versatile holographic reconstruction technique in a transmission electron microscope. This technique is a reproducible method of creating vortex electron beams in a conventional electron microscope. We demonstrate how they may be used in electron energy-loss spectroscopy to detect the magnetic state of materials and describe their properties. Our results show that electron vortex beams hold promise for new applications, in particular for analysing and manipulating nanomaterials, and can be easily produced.

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Figure 1: Calculated holographic reconstruction of a wavefunction carrying angular momentum.
Figure 2: Experimental realization of the holographic reconstruction technique.
Figure 3: Experimental proof of the angular momentum in the sidebands.
Figure 4: Application of the vortex beam to EELS.

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Acknowledgements

J.V. acknowledges financial support from the European Union under the Framework 6 programme under a contract for an Integrated Infrastructure Initiative (reference 026019 ESTEEM). H.T. acknowledges the FWO-Vlaanderen for financial support under contract number G.0147.06.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Electron Microscopy for Materials Science (EMAT), University of Antwerp, Groenenborgerlaan 171, B-2020 Antwerp, Belgium,

    J. Verbeeck & H. Tian

  2. Institute for Solid State Physics and University Service Centre for Electron Microscopy, Vienna University of Technology, A-1040 Vienna, Austria

    P. Schattschneider

Authors
  1. J. Verbeeck
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  2. H. Tian
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Contributions

Author contributions: J.V. developed the idea, designed the apertures, simulated the EELS behaviour, and did first experiments. H.T. did more elaborate experiments and recorded the EELS results. P.S. developed the background of using angular momentum in TEM and EELS and interpreted the results.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to J. Verbeeck.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Verbeeck, J., Tian, H. & Schattschneider, P. Production and application of electron vortex beams. Nature 467, 301–304 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature09366

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