A high power density submicron electron beam source

An electron-optical system (with a thermal field electron source—cathode) is introduced. The system is designed to form on the target surface submicron microprobes of a power density exceeding the ablation threshold (≈108 W/cm2) of condensed media. The numerical modeling of electron paths carried out using a software package (TAU) developed by the authors has shown that the proposed electron-optical system is capable of forming microprobes of a power density comparable with that of modern high-power pulsed laser sources (up to ≈1011 W/cm2).