Vacuum space-charge effects in solid-state photoemission

Solid-state photoemission spectroscopy relies to a large part on pulsed photon sources: third-generation synchrotron-radiation sources and ultrafast laser systems in particular. Especially when the photon pulses are intense, Coulombic repulsion between the emitted electrons will be a limiting factor for photoemission experiments aiming at highest energy and angle resolutions. In the present work, the propagation of the photoelectron cloud to the detector is studied with a full N-body numerical simulation. The influence of various parameters, in particular number of electrons per pulse, source size, pulse duration, kinetic-energy and emission-angle distributions as well as presence of mirror charges in the sample, is investigated in detail. Previous experimental results obtained with various picosecond and femtosecond light sources are successfully reproduced and the general resolution limits of solid-state photoemission using pulsed photon sources are explored. The results are potentially important for the design and interpretation of photoemission experiments with next-generation light sources, such as free-electron lasers and high-harmonic generation sources.