Direct Laser Acceleration of 28 keV Electrons at a Single Dielectric Grating

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• 作者：John Breuer^b ; Peter Hommelhoff^a ; ^b ; ^{peter.hommelhoff@fau.de" class="auth_mail}
• 关键词：laser-driven particle acceleration ; non-relativistic electrons ; dielectric grating accelerator ; inverse Smith-Purcell effect
• 刊名：Physics Procedia
• 出版年：2014
• 年：2014
• 卷：52
• 期：Complete
• 页码：14-18
• 全文大小：803 K

文摘

Direct laser acceleration exploiting the large optical field strength of short laser pulses and the proximity of a dielectric structure can support high acceleration gradients and may therefore lead to much smaller accelerators, with potential application in table-top free electron lasers. We report a proof-of-concept experiment demonstrating direct laser acceleration of non-relativistic 28 keV electrons derived from a conventional scanning electron microscope column at a single fused-silica grating. The electrons pass the grating as closely as 50 nm and interact with the third spatial harmonic, which is excited by 100 fs Titanium:sapphire laser pulses with a peak electric field of 2.85 GV/m. The observed maximum acceleration gradient of 25 MeV/m is already comparable to state- of-the-art RF structures. This work represents the first demonstration of scalable laser acceleration and of the inverse Smith-Purcell effect in the optical regime.