Hanbury Brown--Twiss interferometry with electrons: Coulomb vs. quantum statistics

Abstract

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.