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Towards jitter-free ultrafast electron diffraction technology

Nature Photonics volume 14, pages 245–249 (2020)Cite this article

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Abstract

Stroboscopic visualization of nuclear or electron dynamics in atoms, molecules or solids requires ultrafast pump and probe pulses and a close to perfect synchronization between the two. We have developed a 3 MeV ultrafast electron diffraction (UED) probe technology that nominally reduces the electron bunch duration and the arrival time jitter to the subfemtosecond level. This simple configuration uses a radiofrequency photogun and a 90° achromatic bend and is designed to provide effectively jitter-free conditions. Terahertz streaking measurements reveal an electron bunch duration of 25 fs, even for a charge as high as 0.6 pC, and an arrival time jitter of 7.8 fs, the latter limited by only the measurement accuracy. From pump–probe measurements of photoexcited bismuth films, the instrument response function was determined to be 31 fs. This pioneering jitter-free technique paves the way towards UED of attosecond phenomena in atomic, molecular and solid-state dynamics.

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Fig. 1: Schematic of the UED beamline and simulated temporal characteristics of an electron bunch.
Fig. 2: Simulated arrival time jitter of electron beams.
Fig. 3: THz streaking experiment.
Fig. 4: Comparison of the simulated and measured electron bunch duration and jitter.
Fig. 5: Dynamics of the (300) peak intensities of polycrystalline Bi.

Data availability

The data that support the plots within this paper and other findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the World Class Institute (WCI) Program of the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF), funded by the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning (NRF grant no. WCI 2011-001), and an internal R&D programme at KAERI funded by the Ministry of Science and ICT (MSIT) of the Republic of Korea (525350-19), and partially supported by the University of Science and Technology (UST) UST Young Scientist Research Program, through the University of Science and Technology (no. 2017-YS-06), and a National Research Council of Science & Technology (NST) grant by the Korea government (MSIT) (no. CAP-18-05-KAERI). T.F. acknowledges funding from the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) under grant no. 200020-178812.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Radiation Center for Ultrafast Science, Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute (KAERI), Daejeon, Republic of Korea

    Hyun Woo Kim, In Hyung Baek, Key Young Oang, Mi Hye Kim, Young Chan Kim, Kyu-Ha Jang, Kitae Lee, Sunjeong Park & Young Uk Jeong

  2. Accelerator and Nuclear Fusion Physical Engineering, University of Science and Technology, Daejeon, Republic of Korea

    Hyun Woo Kim, In Hyung Baek, Kyu-Ha Jang, Kitae Lee & Young Uk Jeong

  3. Budker Institute of Nuclear Physics SB RAS, Novosibirsk, Russia

    Nikolay A. Vinokurov

  4. Department of Physics, Chungbuk National University, Cheongju, Republic of Korea

    Young Chan Kim

  5. Department of Accelerator Science, Korea University, Sejong, Republic of Korea

    Seong Hee Park

  6. School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), Daejeon, Republic of Korea

    Junho Shin & Jungwon Kim

  7. Department of Physics, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), Daejeon, Republic of Korea

    Fabian Rotermund

  8. Department of Physics and Energy Harvest-Storage Research Center (EHSRC), University of Ulsan, Ulsan, Republic of Korea

    Sunglae Cho

  9. Institute for Applied Physics, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland

    Thomas Feurer

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Contributions

H.W.K., N.A.V., K.Y.O., K-H.J., S.H.P., S.P., T.F. and Y.U.J. carried out the UED and THz streaking experiment. I.H.B., M.H.K., Y.C.K., K.L. and F.R. led the THz and optical characterization experiments. J.S. and J.K. carried out the synchronization between the laser and RF signal. S.C. carried out the bismuth sample growth. H.W.K., N.A.V. and K.Y.O. carried out the simulations and performed the data analysis. H.W.K. and Y.U.J. wrote the manuscript, with input from all authors.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Young Uk Jeong.

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Supplementary Information

Supplementary Figs. 1 and 2, materials and methods, Table 1 and equations (1)–(6).

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Kim, H.W., Vinokurov, N.A., Baek, I.H. et al. Towards jitter-free ultrafast electron diffraction technology. Nat. Photonics 14, 245–249 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41566-019-0566-4

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