Seminar "Electron-Photon Entanglement in Electron Microscopy" by Mr. Alexander Preimesberger, Vienna University of Technology

Title: Electron-Photon Entanglement in Electron Microscopy

Speaker: Mr. Alexander Preimesberger, TU Wien

Date: Wednesday, June 3, 2026

Time: 14:00-15:00

Venue: C700, Level C, Lab 3

Abastract：

Entanglement is a central resource in quantum technologies, yet it has only recently become accessible in free-electron optics. In my presentation, I will present our recent experimental demonstration of quantum correlations between free electrons and cathodoluminescence photons generated inside a transmission electron microscope [1].
Using 200 keV electrons passing through a thin silicon membrane, we produce correlated electron-photon pairs via transition radiation. A time-resolved single-photon detector and a Timepix3-based direct electron detector allow us to identify coincident pairs and measure their transverse position and momentum correlations. By adapting ghost-imaging techniques [2] and an entanglement witnesses from photonic quantum optics, we quantify these correlations and show a violation of the MGVT separability bound [3], providing evidence for continuous-variable electron-photon entanglement.
We hope that these results will help to make entanglement available as a resource for electron microscopy, enabling novel measurement schemes inspired by photonic quantum optics.
[1] A. Preimesberger, S. Bogdanov, I.C. Bicket, P. Rembold, P. Haslinger, arXiv:2504.13163.
[2] M. J. Padgett and R. W. Boyd, Philos. Trans. R. Soc. A 375, 20160233, (2017).
[3] S. Mancini, V. Giovannetti, D. Vitali, P. Tombesi, Phys. Rev. Lett. 88, 120401 (2002).