Magnetic bottle electron spectrometer driven by electron pulses

We report an electron scattering experiment on argon gas where a keV electron beam is used as a probe and electrons are collected with a magnetic bottle spectrometer. For this purpose, we have built a thermionic gun that produces electron pulses with nanosecond duration by sweeping the beam across a small aperture. To reach the target, electrons must pass through the hole in an axially symmetric arrangement of strong permanent magnets required to operate the magnetic bottle. From the recorded multi-hit sequence of electron arrival times on the microchannel plate detector, a kinetic energy spectrum is built that allows an analysis of the elastic and inelastic electron scattering channels by means of the coincidence technique. After a description of the instrumental configuration and discussion of suitable working parameters, the results of an angle-integrated (e, 2e) experiment are presented for 800 eV electron scattering on argon atoms.