Phase retrieval of an electron vortex beam using diffraction holography

Abstract

In both light optics and electron optics, the amplitude of a wave scattered by an object is an observable that is usually recorded in the form of an intensity distribution in a real space image or a diffraction image. In contrast, retrieval of the phase of a scattered wave is a well-known challenge, which is usually approached by interferometric or numerical methods. In electron microscopy, as a result of constraints in the lens setup, it is particularly difficult to retrieve the phase of a diffraction image. Here, we use a defocused beam generated by a nanofabricated hologram to form a reference wave that can be interfered with a diffracted beam. This setup provides an extended interference region with the sample wavefunction in the Fraunhofer plane. As a case study, we retrieve the phase of an electron vortex beam. Beyond this specific example, the approach can be used to retrieve the wavefronts of diffracted beams from a wide range of samples.

References in corpus (4)

• A unified evaluation of iterative projection algorithms for phase retrieval
• Semiclassical Dynamics of Electron Wave Packet States with Phase Vortices
• Holographic generation of highly twisted electron beams
• Transport of Intensity Phase Retrieval of Arbitrary Wave Fields Including Vortices

Cited by in corpus (5)

• Theory and applications of free-electron vortex states
• Intrinsic multipole moments of the non-Gaussian wave packets
• A general framework for conformal transformations in electron optics
• Theoretical and practical aspects of the design and production of synthetic holograms for transmission electron microscopy
• Deep-learning-based recognition of multi-singularity structured light