A longstanding goal of Akira Tonomura was to observe Hanbury Brown--Twiss anti-correlations between electrons in a field-emission free electron beam. The experimental results were reported in his 2011 paper with Tetsuji Kodama and Nobuyuki Osakabe [Phys. Rev. A 83, 063616 (2011)]. An open issue in such a measurement is whether the observed anti-correlations arise from quantum statistics, or are simply produced by Coulomb repulsion between electrons. In this paper we describe a simple classical model of Coulomb effects to estimate their effects in electron beam interferometry experiments, and conclude that the experiment did indeed observe quantum correlations in the electron arrrival times.
@article{arxiv.1212.4008,
title = {Hanbury Brown--Twiss interferometry with electrons: Coulomb vs. quantum statistics},
author = {Gordon Baym and Kan Shen},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1212.4008},
year = {2012}
}
Comments
Contribution to the Memorial Publication in honor of Akira Tonomura, [eds. K. Fujikawa and Y. A. Ono] to be published by World Scientific Publishing