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Holograms from electrons scattered by light

The quantum interference of electrons that have been scattered by light has been used to produce holograms of the underlying electromagnetic fields — and might open up methods for studying materials at high temporal and spatial resolution.
  1. Claus Ropers

    1. Claus Ropers is at the IV. Physical Institute, University of Göttingen, 37077 Göttingen, Germany.

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If you ask people what a hologram is, they’ll probably describe the 3D light projections of science-fiction films — such as the vision of Princess Leia floating in free space in the 1977 film Star Wars. Such projections are becoming a reality1, but the original goal of holography in science is arguably more mundane: to record a property of wave fields known as the phase, which defines the pattern of peaks and troughs of a travelling wave at a given moment in time. For many physicists, this concept is just as exciting as a sci-fi hologram. Writing in Science Advances, Madan et al.2 report new types of hologram produced by the scattering of electrons by light fields. Not only do these findings broaden the scope of electron holography, but they also allow both the amplitude and the phase of electromagnetic (light) waves to be determined.

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Nature 571, 331-332 (2019)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-019-02016-6

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