arXiv subjects

Peter Hommelhoff

Publications and source records attributed to Peter Hommelhoff.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Spatial and energetic correlations of ultrashort two electron pulses

When two electrons are emitted from a metallic needle tip into a nanometric volume on femtosecond timescales, strong Coulomb correlations arise. While longitudinal correlations, manifested as energy shifts, have been observed both from bare tips and in electron microscopes, transverse correlations remain hardly explored. Here, we present the first complete experimental characterization of such 3D correlations from needle tips. We find that electron pairs of small transversal spatial separation exhibit a pronounced energy gap of 3.3 eV width, while electrons of small longitudinal energy separation show strong transverse repulsion, increasing their average mutual divergence angle by a substantial 34.5%. The measurements are in excellent agreement with semiclassical point-particle simulations. These reveal that the maximal energy-gap magnitude is primarily determined by the laser pulse duration, whereas the maximal spatial separation is governed by the tip radius. The latter can be exploited in a remarkably simple method to generate strongly sub-Poissonian electron beams: A mere aperture, notably present in most electron-optical setups anyway, can act as an electron number sensitive filter. In combination with energy filtering we find an unprecedented suppression of multi-electron pulses reaching g(2) = 0.02 when keeping 3% of the electron beam. These results provide a foundation for future studies of electron entanglement, correlated electron microscopy, and the design of ultrafast electron-optical instruments.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2026

Imaging the transverse component of optical near-fields in resonant photonic structures

We report on imaging the optical near-fields in resonant periodic photonic structures with nanometer resolution using ultrafast 4D scanning transmission electron microscopy (U4DSTEM). In particular, U4DSTEM is applied to visualize the transverse component of the Lorentz force of a synchronous near-field mode excited by an infrared femtosecond pulse in a periodic silicon nanostructure designed for photonic acceleration of electrons. Our results show that in addition to the accelerating/decelerating force acting on the electrons in the longitudinal direction along the electron propagation, the structures can be efficiently used for transverse electron streaking at optical frequencies when excited by light with polarization perpendicular to the electron trajectory. The measured spatial profile of the excited near-field mode intensity is consistent with the numerical simulations performed using finite-difference time domain technique.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2025

Gouy Phase-Related Effects in the Free-Space Optical Modulation of Free Electrons

Modulating the free-electron wave function with light brings new opportunities to create attosecond electron pulse trains, to probe the quantum coherence of systems with significantly improved spatial resolution, and to generate classical and non-classical states of light with wide tunability. It is therefore crucial to efficiently generate free-electron wave functions that are suitable for these applications. In this study, we theoretically investigate an efficient free-space optical modulation of free electrons with two counter-propagating Gaussian beams. We find that the Gaussian beams' Gouy phase not only plays a crucial role in the interaction, but also enables straight-forward generation of valuable free-electron states, including comb-shape spectra with similar amplitudes, and states with high degree of coherence. We also discuss the feasibility of demonstrating these Gouy phase-related effects with chirped femto-second laser pulses. Our study establishes a theoretical foundation and physical intuition about the role of the Gouy phase. It can provide guidance to efficiently shape the free-electron wave function for a wide range of quantum applications.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2025

Cross-process interference in single-cycle electron emission from metal needle tips

Though interference from different emission channels enabled a deeper understanding of strong-field photoemission in atoms and molecules, it remained out of reach for solids. Here, we explore metal needle tips under single-cycle pulses via classical trajectories extended by quantum diffusion and interference and numerical solution of the time-dependent Schr\"odinger equation. We find interference of direct and backscattered electrons with fringe pattern encoding sub-cycle information on birth times and near-field driven acceleration dynamics, opening routes for ultrafast solid-state metrology.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2025

Probing broken time-reversal symmetry with tailored-light photocurrents

Light-field-driven photocurrents represent a powerful tool for generating photocurrents without external bias in light-matter systems that lack inversion symmetry. While these photocurrents are used in electronic applications, such as current sources, switches, and photovoltaics, their presence can also be used to probe material properties in and out of equilibrium, such as topology. Here we advance this path of light-field-driven photocurrent spectroscopy by utilizing tailored laser fields for ultrafast photocurrent generation to study time-reversal symmetry (TRS) broken phases. We employ combinations of bichromatic linearly-polarized laser beams that individually respect mirror (spatial) and time-reversal symmetry, individually precluding photocurrents, but when combined can break symmetries and generate photocurrents. We show, both theoretically and experimentally, that unique choices of the relative polarization angle and two-color phase imposes a forbidden photocurrent selection rule in TRS-invariant systems, as the tailored light maintains TRS while breaking all other spatial symmetries. We then employ state-of-the-art ab-initio simulations to validate this physical mechanism, and, crucially, predict its breaking in materials with intrinsically-broken TRS, creating a background free signal for magnetism and Chern physics. Our work paves way for probing TRS-broken phases of matter in an ultrafast time-resolved manner, not requiring the application of external magnetic fields or even circularly-polarized electric fields.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2025

Attosecond physics in optical near fields

Attosecond science, the electron control by the field of ultrashort laser pulses, is maturing into lightfield-driven electronics, called petahertz electronics. Based on optical field-driven nanostructures, elements for petahertz electronics have been demonstrated. These hinge on the understanding of the electron dynamics in the optical near field of the nanostructure. Here we show near field-induced low energy stripes (NILES) in carrier-envelope phase-dependent electron spectra, a new spectral feature appearing in the direct electrons emitted from a strongly driven nanostructure, i.e., in the easily accessible energy region between 0 and a few electron volts. NILES emerge due to the sub-cycle sensitivity of ponderomotive acceleration of electrons injected into a strong near field gradient by a few-cycle optical waveform. NILES enables us to track the emission of direct and re-scattered electrons down to sub-cycle time-scales and to infer the electron momentum width at emission. Because NILES shows up in the direct part of the electrons, a large fraction of the emitted electrons can now be steered in new ways, facilitating the isolation of individual electron bursts with high charge density of 430 attosecond duration. These results not only substantially advance the understanding of attosecond physics in optical near fields, but also provide new ways of electron control for the nascent field of petahertz electronics.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2025

Driving electrons at needle tips strongly with quantum light

Attosecond science relies on driving electrons after photoemission with the strong optical field of a laser pulse, representing an intense classical coherent state of light. Bright squeezed vacuum (BSV) is a quantum state of light intense enough to drive strong-field physics. However, its mean optical electric field is zero, suggesting that, in a semiclassical view, electrons should not experience strong driving. The question arises if and how this quantum state of light can generate attosecond science signatures in strong-field photoemission. Here we show that the key signatures of strong-field physics - the high energy plateau and the 10-$U_\mathrm{p}$-cut-off - also appear under BSV driving of a needle tip, but only when we post-select electron energy spectra on the individual photon number of each BSV pulse. When averaging over many BSV shots, we observe broad energy spectra featuring no plateau. This suggests that BSV-driven electrons behave as if driven by an ensemble of coherent states of light. Our findings bridge strong-field physics and quantum optics, offering insights into BSV and other quantum light states. Our work paves the way for electron quantum state engineering and the use of strongly driven electrons as quantum light sensors.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2025

Roadmap for Quantum Nanophotonics with Free Electrons

Over the past century, continuous advancements in electron microscopy have enabled the synthesis, control, and characterization of high-quality free-electron beams. These probes carry an evanescent electromagnetic field that can drive localized excitations and provide high-resolution information on material structures and their optical responses, currently reaching the sub-{\aa}ngstr\"om and few-meV regime. Moreover, combining free electrons with pulsed light sources in ultrafast electron microscopy adds temporal resolution in the sub-femtosecond range while offering enhanced control of the electron wave function. Beyond their exceptional capabilities for time-resolved spectromicroscopy, free electrons are emerging as powerful tools in quantum nanophotonics, on par with photons in their ability to carry and transfer quantum information, create entanglement within and with a specimen, and reveal previously inaccessible details on nanoscale quantum phenomena. This Roadmap outlines the current state of this rapidly evolving field, highlights key challenges and opportunities, and discusses future directions through a collection of topical sections prepared by leading experts.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2024

Optical control of electrons in a Floquet topological insulator

Light-dressed materials hold enormous potential for generating new electronic properties. The band structure resulting from light-dressing can exhibit starkly different quantum and topological phenomena. So far, optical control of charge within a light-dressed band structure has been elusive. Here, we demonstrate optical control of electrons in light-dressed graphene. By focusing circularly polarized femtosecond laser pulses at 1550 nm on monolayer graphene, we generate a Floquet topological insulator (FTI). With a phase-locked second harmonic field, we dynamically control electrons in this FTI state. For the first time, we observe photocurrent circular dichroism, the all-optical anomalous Hall effect, and FTI valley-polarized currents. The photocurrents show strong sub-cycle phase-sensitivity, opening the door to ultrafast control within topologically protected electronics (topotronics), spectroscopy, and attosecond physics in novel quantum materials.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2024

Quantum computing and quantum optics with recoiled free electrons

Free electrons interacting coherently with optical fields provide a powerful platform for quantum simulation and quantum control. For kiloelectron-volt electron energies, even optical photon emission and absorption produce appreciable quantum recoils, endowing the electron with a discrete and controllable energy ladder. Starting from relativistic quantum electrodynamics, we derive an exact recoil-resolved interaction Hamiltonian in a traveling wave picture. The resulting recoil ladder forms a high-dimensional qudit with programmable couplings and sufficient controllability for universal quantum computation. We demonstrate applications to quantum simulation, including one-dimensional analogue black-hole models including Hawking radiation physics, and to quantum information processing, where multiple logical qubits and high-fidelity gates can be realized with a single electron. In parallel, the same recoil-enabled dynamics enable the controlled creation of complex hybrid electron--photon states, in which engineered ladder transitions imprint nonclassical correlations and structure onto the emitted light. Together, these results establish recoiled free electrons as a versatile platform bridging quantum optics, Hamiltonian engineering, and quantum simulation.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2024

Hanbury Brown and Twiss interference of electrons in free space from independent needle tip sources

We investigate two-electron interference in free space using two laser-triggered needle tips as independent electron sources, a fermionic realisation of the landmark Hanbury Brown and Twiss interferometer. We calculate the two-electron interference pattern in a quantum path formalism taking into account the fermionic nature and the spin configuration of the electrons. We also estimate the Coulomb repulsion in the setup in a semiclassical approach. We find that antibunching resulting from Pauli's exclusion principle and repulsion stemming from the Coulomb interaction can be clearly distinguished.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2023

Strong-Field Bloch Electron Interferometry for Band Structure Retrieval

When Bloch electrons in a solid are exposed to a strong optical field, they are coherently driven in their respective bands where they acquire a quantum phase as the imprint of the band shape. If an electron approaches an avoided crossing formed by two bands, it may be split by undergoing a Landau-Zener transition. We here employ subsequent Landau-Zener transitions to realize strong-field Bloch electron interferometry (SFBEI), allowing us to reveal band structure information. In particular, we measure the Fermi velocity (band slope) of graphene in the vicinity of the K points as (1.07$\pm$0.04) nm fs$^{-1}$. We expect SFBEI for band structure retrieval to apply to a wide range of material systems and experimental conditions, making it suitable for studying transient changes in band structure with femtosecond temporal resolution at ambient conditions.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2023

Multi-photon electron emission with non-classical light

Photon number distributions from classical and non-classical light sources have been studied extensively, yet their impact on photoemission processes is largely unexplored. In this article, we present measurements of electron number-distributions from metal needle tips illuminated with ultrashort light pulses of different photon quantum statistics. By varying the photon statistics of the exciting light field between classical (Poissonian) and quantum (super-Poissonian), we demonstrate that the measured electron distributions are changed substantially. Using single-mode bright squeezed vacuum light, we measure extreme statistics events with up to 65 electrons from one light pulse at a mean of 0.27 electrons per pulse - the likelihood for such an event equals $10^{-128}$ with Poissonian statistics. Changing the number of modes of the exciting bright squeezed vacuum light, we can tailor the electron-number distribution on demand. Most importantly, our results demonstrate that the photon statistics is imprinted from the driving light to the emitted electrons, opening the door to new sensor devices and to strong-field quantum optics with quantum light.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2023

Deep Learning-Based Spatiotemporal Multi-Event Reconstruction for Delay Line Detectors

Accurate observation of two or more particles within a very narrow time window has always been a challenge in modern physics. It creates the possibility of correlation experiments, such as the ground-breaking Hanbury Brown-Twiss experiment, leading to new physical insights. For low-energy electrons, one possibility is to use a microchannel plate with subsequent delay lines for the readout of the incident particle hits, a setup called a Delay Line Detector. The spatial and temporal coordinates of more than one particle can be fully reconstructed outside a region called the dead radius. For interesting events, where two electrons are close in space and time, the determination of the individual positions of the electrons requires elaborate peak finding algorithms. While classical methods work well with single particle hits, they fail to identify and reconstruct events caused by multiple nearby particles. To address this challenge, we present a new spatiotemporal machine learning model to identify and reconstruct the position and time of such multi-hit particle signals. This model achieves a much better resolution for nearby particle hits compared to the classical approach, removing some of the artifacts and reducing the dead radius by half. We show that machine learning models can be effective in improving the spatiotemporal performance of delay line detectors.

physics.ins-det↗

arXiv2023

Tracing attosecond electron emission from a nanometric metal tip

Solids exposed to intense electric fields release electrons through tunnelling. This fundamental quantum process lies at the heart of various applications, ranging from high brightness electron sources in DC operation to petahertz vacuum electronics in laser-driven operation. In the latter process, the electron wavepacket undergoes semiclassical dynamics in the strong oscillating laser field, similar to strong-field and attosecond physics in the gas phase. There, the sub-cycle electron dynamics has been determined with a stunning precision of tens of attoseconds, but at solids the quantum dynamics including the emission time window has so far not been measured. Here we show that two-colour modulation spectroscopy of backscattering electrons uncovers the sub-optical-cycle strong-field emission dynamics from nanostructures, with attosecond precision. In our experiment, photoelectron spectra of electrons emitted from a sharp metallic tip are measured as function of the relative phase between the two colours. Projecting the solution of the time-dependent Schr\"odinger equation onto classical trajectories relates phase-dependent signatures in the spectra to the emission dynamics and yield an emission duration of $710\pm30$ attoseconds by matching the quantum model to the experiment. Our results open the door to the quantitative timing and precise active control of strong-field photoemission in solid state and other systems and have direct ramifications for diverse fields such as ultrafast electron sources, quantum degeneracy studies and sub-Poissonian electron beams, nanoplasmonics and petahertz electronics.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2022

Imaging the field inside nanophotonic devices

Controlling optical fields on the subwavelength scale is at the core of any nanophotonic device. Of particular interest are nanophotonic particle accelerators that promise a compact alternative to conventional radiofrequency-based accelerators. Efficient electron acceleration in such compact devices critically depends on achieving nanometer control of electron trajectories by precisely designed optical nearfields inside the device. However, these nearfields have so far been inaccessible due to the complexity of the devices and their geometrical constraints, hampering efforts to design and optimize future nanophotonic particle accelerators. Here we present the first measurement of the field distribution inside a nanophotonic accelerator. We develop a novel microscopy approach based on photon-induced nearfield electron microscopy (PINEM) to achieve frequency-tunable deep-subwavelength imaging of the nearfield inside nanophotonic accelerators. We compare the two leading designs of nanophotonic accelerators, also known as dielectric laser accelerators (DLAs): a dual-pillar structure with distributed Bragg reflector and an inverse-designed resonant structure. Our experiments are complemented by full 3D simulations, unveiling surprising deviations from the expected designs, showing complex field distributions related to intricate 3D features in the device and its fabrication tolerances. We further envision a tomography method to image the 3D field distribution, key for the future development of high-precision and hence high-efficiency DLA devices as well as other nanophotonic devices.

physics.acc-ph↗

arXiv2022

Few-electron correlations after ultrafast photoemission from nanometric needle tips

Free electrons are essential in such diverse applications as electron microscopes, accelerators, and photo-emission spectroscopy. Often, space charge effects of many electrons are a nuisance. Confined to extremely small space-time dimensions, even two electrons can interact strongly. In this case, the Coulomb repulsion can now be highly advantageous, because it leads to surprisingly powerful electron-electron correlations, as we demonstrate here. We show that femtosecond laser-emitted electrons from nanometric needle tips are highly anti-correlated in energy because of dynamic Coulomb repulsion, with a visibility of $56\,\%$. We extract a mean energy splitting of $3.3\,$eV and a correlation decay time of $82\,$fs. Importantly, the energy-filtered electrons display a sub-Poissonian number distribution with a second order correlation function as small as $g^{(2)} = 0.34$, implying that shot noise-reduced pulsed electron beams can be realized based on simple energy filtering. Even heralded electrons could become available for quantum-enhanced electron imaging protocols. Furthermore, we also reach the strong-field regime of laser-driven electron emission. We gain deep insights into how the electron correlations of the different electron classes (direct vs. rescattered) are influenced by the strong laser fields. Our work levels the field of quantum electron optics, with direct ramifications for shot noise-reduced and quantum electron imaging as well as direct measurements of correlated electrons from inside of strongly correlated matter.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2022

Experimental considerations in electron beam transport on a nanophotonic chip using alternating phase focusing

Not long after the laser was invented, it has been marked as a candidate source of strong, high-frequency electromagnetic radiation for acceleration of particles. Indeed, while the complex particle accelerator facilities today are an astonishing culmination of decades of work contributed by generations of physicists, engineers, and a host of scientists, new trends and acceleration technologies have been recently proposed and demonstrated. One of these technologies involves the miniaturization of particle accelerators, which is achieved by replacing the radio-frequency electromagnetic fields accelerating the particles with fields in the optical frequency range, using lasers. This entails using nanophotonics structures to provide the required field distribution. Recently, individual elements towards the nanophotonics counterpart of RF accelerators have been demonstrated. Similarly, active electron transport through such a structure has been shown, which was based on the concept of alternating phase focusing. In this contribution, we discuss and augment on the recently-demonstrated principle of alternating phase focusing using optical frequencies, and provide new insights from relevant simulations and experiments. In particular, we show how to identify possible imprecisions and parasitic effects from time delay scans and discuss how the transmission of electrons through the nanometric structure depends on the temporal overlap between electron and laser pulses, and show how the incidence angle of the electron beam can affect the measured transmission of electrons through the structure.

physics.acc-ph↗