Related Experiment Video
Updated: May 18, 2026

Photoelectron Imaging of Anions Illustrated by 310 Nm Detachment of F−
Published on: July 27, 2018
Electron quantum optics: partitioning electrons one by one
E Bocquillon1, F D Parmentier, C Grenier
1Laboratoire Pierre Aigrain, Ecole Normale Supérieure, CNRS (UMR 8551), Université P. et M. Curie, 24 rue Lhomond, 75231 Paris Cedex 05, France.
Abstract:
We have realized a quantum optics like Hanbury Brown-Twiss (HBT) experiment by partitioning, on an electronic beam splitter, single elementary electronic excitations produced one by one by an on-demand emitter. We show that the measurement of the output currents correlations in the HBT geometry provides a direct counting, at the single charge level, of the elementary excitations (electron-hole pairs) generated by the emitter at each cycle. We observe the antibunching of low energy excitations emitted by the source with thermal excitations of the Fermi sea already present in the input leads of the splitter, which suppresses their contribution to the partition noise. This effect is used to probe the energy distribution of the emitted wave packets.
Related Concept Videos
Electron Configurations
The relative energies of the subshells determine the order in which atomic orbitals are filled (1s, 2s, 2p, 3s, 3p, 4s,...
The Aufbau Principle and Hund's Rule
The Pauli Exclusion Principle
The Quantum-Mechanical Model of an Atom
Electron Configuration of Multielectron Atoms
Electron Orbital Model
The first shell is closest to the nucleus, and it has only one subshell with a single spherical orbital called the...

