Time-of-flight photoelectron momentum microscopy with 80–500 MHz photon sources: electron-optical pulse picker or bandpass pre-filter

The small time gaps of synchrotron radiation in conventional multi-bunch mode (100–500 MHz) or laser-based sources with high pulse rate (∼80 MHz) are prohibitive for time-of-flight (ToF) based photoelectron spectroscopy. Detectors with time resolution in the 100 ps range yield only 20–100 resolved time slices within the small time gap. Here we present two techniques of implementing efficient ToF recording at sources with high repetition rate. A fast electron-optical beam blanking unit with GHz bandwidth, integrated in a photoelectron momentum microscope, allows electron-optical ‘pulse-picking’ with any desired repetition period. Aberration-free momentum distributions have been recorded at reduced pulse periods of 5 MHz (at MAX II) and 1.25 MHz (at BESSY II). The approach is compared with two alternative solutions: a bandpass pre-filter (here a hemispherical analyzer) or a parasitic four-bunch island-orbit pulse train, coexisting with the multi-bunch pattern on the main orbit. Chopping in the time domain or bandpass pre-selection in the energy domain can both enable efficient ToF spectroscopy and photoelectron momentum microscopy at 100–500 MHz synchrotrons, highly repetitive lasers or cavity-enhanced high-harmonic sources. The high photon flux of a UV-laser (80 MHz, <1 meV bandwidth) facilitates momentum microscopy with an energy resolution of 4.2 meV and an analyzed region-of-interest (ROI) down to <800 nm. In this novel approach to ‘sub-µm-ARPES’ the ROI is defined by a small field aperture in an intermediate Gaussian image, regardless of the size of the photon spot.