Attosecond Electron Microscopy

The electron motion in atoms and molecules is at the heart of all phenomena in nature that occur outside the nucleus. Recently, ultrafast electron and X-ray imaging tools have been developed to image the ultrafast dynamics of matter in real time and space. The cutting-edge temporal resolution of these imaging tools is on the order of a few tens to a hundred femtoseconds, limiting imaging to atomic dynamics. Hence electron motion imaging remains beyond the reach. Here, we achieved attosecond electron imaging temporal resolution in a transmission electron microscope, orders of magnitude faster than the highest reported imaging resolution, to demonstrate, which we coin it as (attomicroscopy) to image the field-induced electron dynamics in neutral multilayer graphene. Our results show that the electron motion between the carbon atoms in graphene is due to the field-driven electron dynamics in the conduction band and depends on the field waveform, strength, and polarization direction. This attomicroscopy imaging provides more insights into the electron motion of neutral matter in real time and space and would have long-anticipated real-life attosecond science applications in quantum physics, chemistry, and biology.