1University Service Centre for Transmission Electron Microscopy, TU Wien, Wiedner Hauptstraße 8-10/E057-02, 1040 Wien, Austria
2Institute of Solid State Physics, TU Wien, Wiedner Hauptstraße 8-10/E138-03, 1040 Wien, Austria
3CEOS Corrected Electron Optical Systems GmbH, Englerstraße 28, 69126 Heidelberg, Germany
4Ernst Ruska-Centre for Microscopy and Spectroscopy with Electrons (ER-C) and Peter Grünberg Institute, Forschungszentrum Jülich, 52425 Jülich, Germany
5RWTH Aachen University, Ahornstraße 55, 52074 Aachen, Germany
6Laboratorium für Elektronenmikroskopie (LEM), Karlsruher Institut für Technologie (KIT), Engesserstraße 7, 76131 Karlsruhe, Germany
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Abstract
The topological charge $m$ of vortex electrons spans an infinite-dimensional Hilbert space. Selecting a two-dimensional subspace spanned by $m=pm 1$, a beam electron in a transmission electron microscope (TEM) can be considered as a quantum bit (qubit) freely propagating in the column. A combination of electron optical quadrupole lenses can serve as a universal device to manipulate such qubits at the experimenter’s discretion. We set up a TEM probe forming lens system as a quantum gate and demonstrate its action numerically and experimentally. High-end TEMs with aberration correctors are a promising platform for such experiments, opening the way to study quantum logic gates in the electron microscope.
Featured image: Left: Schematic of the electron-optical setup. Middle: Incident wavefunction. Right: Transformed outgoing wavefunction and experimental intensity distribution.
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