544 research outputs found
Spatial Dependence of Electron-Hole Pair Creation in Ion-Solid and Electron-Solid Interactions
The problem of electron excitation induced by interaction of charged particles with solids is investigated on theoretical grounds. The excitation probability is calculated both in homogeneous media and at surfaces. The surface wake potential, needed in the latter, is reviewed. The cases of transmission and aloof geometries are considered separately. Surface plasmons are shown to play a crucial role in the latter. An application to coincidence scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM) experiments is also discussed. Finally, a spatial representation of the excitation probability is presented
Probing Quantum Optical Excitations with Fast Electrons
Probing optical excitations with nanometer resolution is important for
understanding their dynamics and interactions down to the atomic scale.
Electron microscopes currently offer the unparalleled ability of rendering
spatially-resolved electron spectra with combined meV and sub-nm resolution,
while the use of ultrafast optical pulses enables fs temporal resolution and
exposure of the electrons to ultraintense confined optical fields. Here, we
theoretically investigate fundamental aspects of the interaction of fast
electrons with localized optical modes that are made possible by these
advances. We use a quantum-optics description of the optical field to predict
that the resulting electron spectra strongly depend on the statistics of the
sample excitations (bosonic or fermionic) and their population (Fock, coherent,
or thermal), whose autocorrelation functions are directly retrieved from the
ratios of electron gain intensities. We further explore feasible experimental
scenarios to probe the quantum characteristics of the sampled excitations and
their populations.Comment: 13 pages, 6 figures, 56 reference
Extraordinary absorption of decorated undoped graphene
We theoretically study absorption by an undoped graphene layer decorated with
arrays of small particles. We discuss periodic and random arrays within a
common formalism, which predicts a maximum absorption of for suspended
graphene in both cases. The limits of weak and strong scatterers are
investigated and an unusual dependence on particle-graphene separation is found
and explained in terms of the effective number of contributing evanescent
diffraction orders of the array. Our results can be important to boost
absorption by single layer graphene due to its simple setup with potential
applications to light harvesting and photodetection based on energy (F\"orster)
rather than charge transfer.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure
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