Principles of Electron Optics (Enhanced Edition‪)‬

The properties of beams of free electrons, released from a material source
and propagating through a vacuum region in some device, are of interest in
many diverse fields of instrumentation and technology. The study of such
electron beams forms the subject of electron optics, which divides naturally
into geometrical optics, when the wavelength is negligible, and wave optics,
in which effects due to the finite wavelength are considered. This first volume
is concerned with geometrical optics, a knowledge of which is needed
to analyse an extremely wide range of instruments: cathode-ray tubes;
the family of electron microscopes, which now includes the fixed-beam and
scanning transmission instruments, the scanning electron microscope and
the emission microscope; electron spectrometers and mass spectrographs if
we include charged particles other than electrons; image converters; electron
interferometers and diffraction devices; electron welding machines; and
electron-beam lithography devices. We could indeed include electron accelerators,
such as betatrons and electron synchrotrons, but a rather different
approach is often more useful in those machines. This list is by no means
complete but it already demonstrates the great diversity of the possible
applications of electron optics.