Streak camera temporal resolution improvement using a time-dependent field

Streak camera is an important diagnostic device in the studies of laser plasma interaction, the detailed structure of photo reaction from material science to biochemistry, and in the measurement of the longitudinal distribution of a beam in accelerators. In this paper, we report on a new method which can potentially improve the temporal resolution of a streak camera down to femtoseconds. This method uses a time-dependent acceleration field to defocus the photo electrons longitudinally. This not only reduces the time dispersion distortion caused by initial energy spread but also mitigates the effects from the space- charge forces of photo electrons. An illustration of the method shows significant improvement of the modulation transfer function (MFT) compared with the conventional design.