Space-charge effect in electron time-of-flight analyzer for high-energy photoemission spectroscopy

The space-charge effect, due to the instantaneous emission of many electrons after the absorption of a single photons pulse, causes distortion in the photoelectron energy spectrum. Two calculation methods have been applied to simulate the expansion during a free flight of clouds of mono- and bi-energetic electrons generated by a high energy pulse of light and their results have been compared. The accuracy of a widely used tool, such as SIMION®, in predicting the energy distortion caused by the space-charge has been tested and the reliability of its results is verified. Finally we used SIMION® to take into account the space-charge effects in the simulation of simple photoemission experiments with a time-of-flight analyzer.