Shot-to-shot acquisition ultrafast electron diffraction

TL;DR

This paper introduces a shot-to-shot acquisition method for ultrafast electron diffraction that significantly enhances signal quality by improving the SNR by tenfold, enabling more precise ultrafast scattering measurements.

Contribution

A novel shot-to-shot acquisition technique with phase-locking at 20kHz for ultrafast electron diffraction, improving noise performance and applicability in high-repetition rate setups.

Findings

Shot-to-shot method increases SNR by an order of magnitude.

Phase-locked acquisition at 20kHz is effective in UED.

Method is adaptable to other high-repetition rate electron experiments.

Abstract

We demonstrate a novel shot-to-shot acquisition method for optical pump - keV electron energy probe in ultrafast scattering experiments. We integrate a phase-locked acquisition scheme at a repetition rate of 20kHz in a conventional ultrafast electron diffraction (UED) setup. We proceed to a full characterization of the noise level in different configurations and for realistic scenarios. The shot-to-shot acquisition improves the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) by one order of magnitude and can be readily implemented in other high-repetition rate electron diffraction and spectroscopy setups.