School on nano-optics with free electrons 2024

Electron optics and spectroscopy instrumentation developments in the last 20 years have considerably widened the range of applicability of electron beam techniques to nano-optics: meV beam energy spread, single atoms imaging capabilities, electron wavefunction shaping, fs pump probe experiments, and efficient light coupling to and from samples are a reality. This has enabled the study of a variety of excitations (plasmons, phonons, excitons...) at extreme spatial, temporal and spectral resolutions. Therefore, new theories have blossomed to explain exciting results coming from electron energy-loss spectroscopy (EELS), cathodoluminescence (CL) and photon induced near-filed electron microscopy (PINEM), and central concepts of nanooptics or quantum optics have been shown to be applicable to electron-based spectroscopies.