Imaging many-body Coulomb interactions and ultrafast photoionization and diffraction with cold atom electron and ion sources

The CAEIS cold-atom electron/ion source, based on photoionisation of laser cooled atoms, provides a powerful tool for investigating fundamental physical processes. The very low temperature of the ions has allowed us to image intra-beam Coulomb effects with unprecedented detail. With ultrafast laser excitation and streak detection we can probe competing ionization processes, particularly via Rydberg states, including sequential excitation, multiphoton excitation, resonance-enhanced multiphoton excitation and two-color multiphoton excitation. Knowledge from these studies has enabled ultrafast single-shot diffractive electron imaging with atomic resolution using a CAEIS.