Photoelectron imaging spectrometry: Principle and inversion method

A new photoelectron spectrometer has recently been used to analyze the energy and spatial distribution of photoelectrons produced by multiphoton ionization of rare gases. It is based on the analysis of the image obtained by projecting the expanding electron cloud resulting from the ionization process onto a two-dimensional position sensitive detector by means of a static electric field. In this article, we present the principle of this imaging spectrometer and the relevant equations of motion of the charged particle in this device, together with an inversion method that allows us to obtain the energy and angular distribution of the electrons. We present here the inversion procedure relevant to the case where the electrostatic energy acquired in the static field is large as compared to the initial kinetic energy of the charged particles. A more general procedure relevant to any regime will be described in a following article. (C) 1996 American Institute of Physics.