TY - JOUR A1 - Kühn, Danilo A1 - Giangrisostomi, Erika A1 - Jay, Raphael Martin A1 - Sorgenfrei, Florian A1 - Föhlisch, Alexander T1 - The influence of x-ray pulse length on space-charge effects in optical pump/x-ray probe photoemission JF - New journal of physics : the open-access journal for physics N2 - Pump-probe photoelectron spectroscopy (PES) is a versatile tool to investigate the dynamics of transient states of excited matter. Vacuum space-charge effects can mask these dynamics and complicate the interpretation of electron spectra. Here we report on space-charge effects in Au 4f photoemission from a polycrystalline gold surface, excited with moderately intense 90 ps (FWHM) soft x-ray probe pulses, under the influence of the Coulomb forces exerted by a pump electron cloud, which was produced by intense 40 fs laser pulses. The experimentally observed kinetic energy shift and spectral broadening of the Au 4f lines, measured with highly-efficient time-of-flight spectroscopy, are in good agreement with simulations utilizing a mean-field model of the electrostatic pump electron potential. This confirms that the line broadening is predominantly caused by variations in the take-off time of the probe electrons without appreciable influence of local scattering events. Our findings might be of general interest for pump-probe PES with picosecond-pulse-length sources. KW - space-charge effects KW - mean-field model KW - x-ray photoemission KW - electron spectroscopy KW - pump-probe KW - ARTOF Y1 - 2019 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1088/1367-2630/ab2f5c SN - 1367-2630 VL - 21 PB - IOP Publ. Ltd. CY - Bristol ER -