Analysis and applications of a heralded electron source

Abstract

We analytically describe the noise properties of a heralded electron source made from a standard electron gun, a weak photonic coupler, a single photon counter, and an electron energy filter. We describe the sub-Poissonian statistics of the source, the engineering requirements for efficient heralding, and several potential applications. We use simple models of electron beam processes to demonstrate advantages which are situational, but potentially significant in electron lithography and scanning electron microscopy.

Keywords

• electron microscopy
• electron sources
• scanning electron microscopy
• scanning transmission electron microscopy
• electron lithography