Improving the low-dose performance of aberration correction in single sideband ptychography

Abstract

The single sideband (SSB) framework of analytical electron ptychography can account for the presence of residual geometrical aberrations induced by the probe-forming lens. However, the accuracy of this aberration correction method is highly sensitive to the invested electron dose, in part due to the necessity of phase unwrapping. In this work, we thus propose two strategies to improve the performance in low-dose conditions: confining phase unwrapping within the sidebands and selecting only well-unwrapped sidebands for calculating aberration coefficients. These strategies are validated through SSB reconstructions of both simulated and experimental 4D-STEM datasets of monolayer tungsten diselenide (WSe₂). A comparison of results demonstrates significant improvements in Poisson noise tolerance, making aberration correction more robust and reliable for low-dose imaging.