Measurement and control of electron wave packets from a single-electron source

Abstract

We report an experimental technique to measure and manipulate the arrival-time and energy distributions of electrons emitted from a semiconductor electron pump, operated as both a single-electron source and a two-electron source. Using an energy-selective detector whose transmission we control on picosecond time scales, we can measure directly the electron arrival-time distribution and we determine the upper bound to the distribution width to be 30 ps. We study the effects of modifying the shape of the voltage wave form that drives the electron pump, and show that our results can be explained by a tunneling model of the emission mechanism. This information was in turn used to control the emission-time difference and energy gap between a pair of electrons.