Ultrafast voltage sampling using single-electron wavepackets

We demonstrate an ultrafast voltage sampling technique using a stream of electron wavepackets. Electrons are emitted from a single-electron pump and travel through electron waveguides towards a detector potential barrier. Our electrons sample an instantaneous voltage on the gate upon arrival at the detector barrier. Fast sampling is achieved by minimising the duration that the electrons interact with the barrier, which can be made as small as a few picoseconds. The value of the instan- taneous voltage can be determined by varying the gate voltage to match the barrier height to the electron energy, which is used as a stable reference. The test waveform can be reconstructed by shifting the electron arrival time against it. Although we find that the our current system is limited by the experimental line bandwidth to 12–18 GHz, we argue that this method has scope to increase the bandwidth of voltage sampling to 100 GHz and beyond.