A high-resolution time-of-flight energy analyzer for femtosecond electron pulses at 30 keV.

We report a time-of-flight spectrometer for electron pulses at up to 30 keV, which is a suitable energy for atomic-resolution femtosecond investigations via time-resolved electron diffraction, microscopy, and energy loss spectroscopy. For realistic femtosecond beams without apertures, the instrument's energy resolution is ∼0.5 eV (full width at half maximum) or 2 × 10(-5) at a throughput of 50%-90%. We demonstrate the analyzer's versatility by three first applications, namely, femtosecond electron pulse metrology via optical streaking, in situ drift correction in laser-microwave synchronization for electron pulse compression, and time-resolved electron energy loss spectroscopy of aluminum, showing the instrument's capability of tracking plasmonic loss peak positions with few-meV accuracy.