Detailed observation of space-charge dynamics using ultracold ion bunches

Abstract

Control of Coulomb expansion in charged particle beams is of critical importance for applications including electron and ion microscopy, injectors for particle accelerators and in ultrafast electron diffraction, where space–charge effects constrain the temporal and spatial imaging resolution. The development of techniques to reverse space–charge-driven expansion, or to observe shock waves and other striking phenomena, have been limited by the masking effect of thermal diffusion. Here we show that ultracold ion bunches extracted from laser-cooled atoms can be used to observe the effects of self-interactions with unprecedented detail. We generate arrays of small closely spaced ion bunches that..