GV m<sup>−1</sup> on-chip particle accelerator driven by few-cycle femtosecond laser pulse
Li Sun, Weihao Liu, Jie Zhou, Yunliang Zhu, Zijia Yu, Yucheng Liu, Qika Jia, Baogen Sun, Hongliang Xu
Abstract
Abstract Particle accelerator on chip with high acceleration gradient has been an unremitting goal of researchers. Dielectric laser accelerator (DLA) is a possible candidate to achieve this goal. However, due to the limitation of dielectric breakdown, it is difficult for the available DLAs to reach an acceleration gradient as high as 1 GV m −1 since a long-duration multi-cycle laser pulse with high fluence have to be used. Here we propose to use a few-cycle laser pulse to drive a DLA based on the inverse Cherekov radiation effect. It significantly reduces the required pulse duration and the laser fluence, remarkably increasing the achievable acceleration gradient. Moreover, by using a cascade acceleration scheme, we realize a high energy-gain acceleration for low-energy electrons in a microscale device by simulation, which paves the way for the development of a fully on-chip particle accelerator.