Ultrashort electron pulse generation with single-femtosecond-level jitter
Ultrashort electron bunches with precise pump laser synchronization and adequate charge are fundamental for time-resolved techniques like ultrafast electron diffraction (UED) and advanced light sources. Here, we achieve electron chopping and compression through a single terahertz (THz)-driven device, producing 50-femtosecond, near-femtocoulomb (fC) electron pulses with 1.4-femtosecond arrival time jitter sustained over an hour. This achieves a 35-fold pulse duration reduction and 10-fold jitter improvement compared to cases without the THz device, marking the shortest directly measured pulse duration and smallest timing jitter reported for multielectron pulses (near-fC level) at the kilo-electron volt level. High-quality electron diffraction confirms this technique's suitability for UED. We further introduce a beam tilting correction via a tilted antenna, enabling bunch compression down to 6 femtoseconds. Furthermore, we have demonstrated its capability of reducing extended timing jitter from several hundred femtoseconds to the few-femtosecond level, offering a promising solution to the long-standing synchronization challenge between radio frequency accelerators and optical lasers. This advancement paves the way for jitter-free UED techniques with attosecond temporal resolution, thereby notably enhancing modern ultrafast applications.
Authors
- He Xie (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9709-8432)
- Dace Su
- Jiaqi Zheng
- Dongfang Zhang
- Franz X. Kärtner
Institutions
- Universität Hamburg (DE)
- Ministry of Education (TW)
- Center for Free-Electron Laser Science (DE)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Science Advances
- Published
- 2026-03-04
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aec0008
- Primary Topic
- Particle Accelerators and Free-Electron Lasers
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00