Arbitrarily shaped high-coherence electron and ion bunches from laser-cooled atoms

Charged particle sources based on photoionisation of laser cooled atoms can provide unique properties, in particular high spatial coherence and the ability to create complex three-dimensional spatial density distributions, allowing detailed measurement of the internal charged particle interactions. Cold electrons extracted from laser cooled atoms promise the spatial coherence and high current required for picosecond molecular scale imaging. Similarly, sources of cold ions provide the opportunity of ion microscopy and ion beam milling with unprecedented resolution. We use arbitrary and real-time control of the electron and ion bunch shapes to demonstrate and measure the high spatial coherence of the cold atom electron and ion source.