Publication at Faculty of Mathematics and Physics |
2021
Abstract
We propose an all-optical technique for the generation of pulsed electron vortex beams for applications in ultrafast electron microscopy. The technique is based on inelastic scattering of electrons at the ponderomotive potential of an optical traveling wave formed by two laser pulses at different frequencies.
One of the optical pulses has the form of a vortex beam with nonzero orbital angular momentum (OAM). We show that the OAM can be transferred to the electron wave function, leading to the production of an electron vortex state separated from the initial state in the energy domain.